Role Specific Information

Job Description

About the Role

As Director, Division Merchandising Manager of Women’s Footwear you will play a pivotal role in shaping and executing the merchandising strategy to ensure we offer the most compelling and on-trend footwear assortment across our omni-channel platform.   This role is critical in shaping our product assortment, maximizing sales, and enhancing customer satisfaction. You  will create and drive a customer-obsessed product merchandising vision and business strategy to meet Category goals. You will be responsible for leading a merchandising team and cross-functional category team for end-to-end execution of product vision for National and Proprietary Brands. As a key partner to Design, you will also own and drive the intersection of product innovation and commercialization.

WHAT YOU’LL DO:

• Incorporate customer insights, competition and category trends to set overarching category assortment vision into business strategy, and respond to in-season business trends

• Communicate overarching omni-merchandising vision to category cross-functional teams

• Drive innovation and make bold trade-offs to maximize category and brand

• Serve as the customer and competitive expert for product, brand and category

• Operate as a key Design partner to create customer, business and brand-relevant product offerings 

• Own product strategy and buying decisions for National and Proprietary brands

• Visit relevant markets and regions to gather product and consumer information, ideate future product strategies and establish business relationships

• Leads and challenges the merchandising and planning teams to appropriately price product to deliver on sales velocity, markdown and profit goals

• Partner with Marketing team to develop sub-category marketing strategies, identify key merchandise stories and plan the timing of marketing campaigns

• Lead and develop your team, identifying and building best-in-class talent  and drive overall team engagement 

• Meet KPIs including Sales Performance, Merchandise Gross Margin performance, Turnover Performance to Profit and Loss, Customer Choice Metric and Change Management

• Support and execute the team vision, set clear objectives, assign and direct work, manage performance, and maintain open communications to create an effective work environment

What Skills You Have

Required

• Minimum of 7 years of experience in retail buying, with a focus on women’s footwear

• Deep understanding of market trends, consumer behavior, and competitive landscape in the women’s footwear industry

• Broad thinker with an enterprise view

• Exceptional product acumen and ability to lead product creation and select relevant product

• Catalyst of change with a growth mindset

• Strong sense of curiosity, agility, urgency and resiliency

• Outstanding communication and presentation skills

• Strong collaboration and influence skills to build long-term strategic partnerships

• Adept strategic and analytical skills to deliver growth

• Passion and eye for product and customer obsession

• Ability to develop top talent and highly engaged teams