Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organisation:

You will be responsible for maximizing the sales, profitability & brand equity of the Emerging Markets retail & franchise organization by building and leading the merchandising pre-season strategy for full price owned channels.

You will be driving and constantly innovating all processes around connecting financial ambitions to product planning acting as the HUB representative for owned brick&mortar channels between brand & regional stakeholders. You will own merchandising & financial planning (i.e. Open to buy), store clustering, grading & option planning, space planning and support the regional merchandising teams on assortments strategies as well as in-season operations.

You will be among the EM SPOC for enhancing merchandising tech capabilities as requested by the business.

You will play a key role in standardizing a merchandising way of working across regional teams through upskilling and implementing effective retail centric standards.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work with Senior Director/Director Merch in executing EM OR merchandising goals and ensure deployment by working collaboratively with clusters teams.
• Deliver financial targets including Net sales, Sell through, Standard margin.
• Lead pre-season planning including Open-To-Buy (OTB) plan, pre-season product planning, option planning, forecasting (including handover to BUs, clusters & Demand Planning) for owned full price brick & mortar channels.
• Support the deployment of ranges and assortment planning strategies for own retail & franchise stores in collaboration with the brand team.
• Review Open-To-Buy (OTB) & seasonal buy plans of regional teams and drive changes to the strategy where needed to ensure the right level of stock based on commerciality and brand vision.
• Support clusters in maintaining a healthy stock level pre-season & in-season
• Work closely with the Business Solution Team to meet world class merchandising best practice.
• Work with Director in mapping the merchandising process and define appropriate merchandising capabilities enhancement for the market.
• Work with the Director to define the methodology of option and space management. Lead clusters through deployment of the same.
• Develop a trading framework between HUB & clusters
• Contribute to the development of key merchandising reports and be responsible for its implementation in markets.
• Review in season stock cover and drive actions with the regional teams.
• Identify and maximize new & in season business opportunities by understanding and executing on respective channel potentials.
• Liaise with markets to ensure they implement the correct end of season management to maximize clearance and minimize cost of reduction.
• Store visits as needed and advised by the business (expected ratio office/travel is 80%/20%)
• Role model the leadership framework and ONE EM mindset.
• Lead and develop your own team
• Interface with key stakeholders including Marketing, Visual Merchandising (VM), Store Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, Logistics
• Drive innovation across the function in terms of process automation and optimisation to improve availability across channels

Key Relationships:

• Bus (category merchandising), CTC (Concept-to-Consumer)
• Retail Operations
• Marketing activation
• Demand Planning
• Supply chain
• Retail leads
• Finance/Controlling
• Relevant Global Teams – Merchandising, CTC.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• You are an absolute team player who puts WE before I
• You can be seen as a role model for leadership and influencing capabilities
• You are a confident about your retail merchandising & product expertise and can be seen as an expert
• You understand the E2E retail merchandising stream in detail and can effectively upskill team members
• You have a strong analytic background and a good eye for product
• You can navigate the ambiguity of a matrix organization
• You are proactive and finding solutions to business needs motivates you
• Ability to work effectively under pressure and with multiple diverse regions
• Strong trading mindset, with an entrepreneurial flair to maximize business opportunities.
• Fluent in English and other language(s) is an advantage

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

• University degree, ideally in business with marketing and sales focus- MBA a plus
• Retail Merchandising expertise required
• Total of 5-8 years experience with minimum 5+ years’ leadership / directorial / head of dept experience of core buying &merchandising function preferably in a retail organization, with broad-based experience working with fashion franchises, vertical and multichannel retailers. Experience working with a Sporting Goods retailer is preferred.
• Functional awareness of store operations, Visual Merchandising, Marketing Activation, Human Resources, Finance, Supply Chain and Logistics
• Experienced in working with internal stakeholders and external agencies to establish efficient and scalable processes
• Experienced in working cross-functional within international organization