Senior Merchant, VS Bras

Your Role:

The Senior Merchant drives sales & margin growth across books of business that are complex and/or diverse. They strategize seasonal assortment plans based upon a detailed knowledge of the brand, intimate understanding of the customer, and studied appreciation of the competition and overall market. He/she critically evaluates the assortment and reacts to in-season sales and current trends accordingly and translates to future seasons. They work closely with planning, stores ops, marketing, and visual to ensure the brand vision is consistently executed for their books of business and the right product distortions are communicated to create a one-of-a-kind in-store shopping experience. They must possess strong leadership skills as he/she is ultimately responsible for driving cross-functional communication and motivating the team to be customer-focused, innovative, fast and team-oriented in their work. The senior merchant prioritizes workload and plays an active role in training merchant talent within the company. They demonstrate smart risk-taking in investment strategies and merchandise point of views and share best practices and key learnings with other categories.

Your Impact:

Leadership and Strategy

• Align book of business strategy to total omni-channel strategy and supports vision of growth
• Demonstrate a holistic approach and champion cross-category alignment and partnership
• Contribute to the success of the category through developing and driving seasonal strategies that meet or exceed the financial goals
• Drive category business by "outside of the box" thinking that connects the lines between financial patterns and market/store insights to identify growth opportunities
• Represent category in key cross-functional meetings, driving prioritization and distortion

Customer

• Oversee customer intimacy and competitive intelligence activities for a thorough understanding of the client and competitive landscape to recommend and initiate new product development for launch and fashion product
• Collect and filter customer intimacy insights and drive to actionable next steps to impact assortment strategy.
• Maximize customer experience by driving execution of all sales education, marketing, and visual requests for the product category (pre-season and in-season)
• Understand the customers lifestyle by staying on top of trends, social media, and pop culture as it specifically relates to the collegiate customer.
• Develop strategy behind store and campus visit schedule for category team and manage travel budget associated with that strategy.

Product

• Attend Concept and Kickoff meetings each season to cascade seasonal roadmaps to the broader cross-functional team
• Own reviewing and approval of color/size/store investments and recommended action plans
• Work with partners (design, sourcing, production) to create and execute product details that correlate with the positioning of the brand, trend and opportunity
• Maximize customer experience by driving execution of all sales education, marketing, and visual requests for the product category (pre-season and in-season)
• Understand competitive environment; proactively seek market knowledge through exposure to competitive retail outlets
• Lead weekly cross-functional WIPS meetings
• Work with Production & Planning to influence sourcing/speed strategies & to ensure execution

Financial

• Accountable for sales and margin targets for their book(s) of business
• Responsible for book(s) of business that are critical for the success of the business and highly impact the bottom line
• Develop lineplan architecture by season and align with Planning partners in lineplan reviews to present to Senior Leadership.
• Ensure price-value relationship is in line with client expectation
• Understand product trends and historical data at the category level in order to manage in-season opportunities
• Partner with deployment, space planning and demand forecasters to ensure the right product is in the right stores
• Communicate Seasonal Line Plan to Design team, depending on structure of the Merchant team
• Actively involved with Marketing/PR to develop strategies to incubate new businesses

Collaboration

• Lead day-to-day communication between all members of the team
• Develop and maintains effective working relationships with members of cross-functional teams by owning weekly cross-functional meetings
• Act as a key liaison between design, production and planning partners
• Understands and appropriately navigates communication to key partners at varying levels; understands audience for communication and edits accordingly.
• Influences Design partners on strategic intent of product development through customer insights and financial detail.

Talent

• Train, motivate and develop team to ensure effective performance and growth through consistent on-the-job training
• Act as a role model within the company by coaching and teaching team members to work together and remain focused
• At least one direct report
• Demonstrates mentoring and strong leadership to the Junior Merchant team

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Your Experience:

• College degree or equivalent experience
• 5+ years with Brand Development and Merchandise Buying with 1-2 years of management experience
• Multi-category experience preferred
• Successful track record for high volume, or complex, business growth and bottom line results
• Ability to innovate change through visionary thinking
• Excellent taste level with proven talent to create a cohesive fashion viewpoint
• Solid management experience and proven leadership to inspire a team with unquestionable integrity and trust
• Possess strong presentation, listening, verbal and written communication skills
• Intimate understanding of competition, target customer and the brand specific fashion trends.
• Ability to mentor and train associate and assistant merchants
• Ability to adapt well to diverse audiences and environments
• Systems savvy