Footwear Merchandising Director

West Coast

This is a brand new position with an athletic footwear company.  This is a company with a professional atmosphere looking for a confident leader that has worked with great brands that can manage and drive the design/development/strategic process for a performance based footwear division.

Responsibilites:

• Develop, manage and organize short-term goals critical to the brands business. 
• Develops or participates in business planning, performance targets and policy development.
• Responsible for directing creative teams in the development of seasonal trend boards for all major categories of footwear (Kids, Women's, Athletic)
• Work with Senior Management, Line Builders, and Sales Executives to develop comprehensive product development timelines for this brand.
• Oversees project management and accuracy of the project development activity
• Distributes development project loads on a seasonal basis to the development team, taking into consideration seasonal product loads, technical difficulty and technical competencies of the developers on the team.
• Collaborates with the Asia team to make sure the development projects and load is appropriate for the Asia team and factories.  Manage the correspondence within the brand, our design team and overseas development centers. 
• Develop best methods that will assist to manage and guide the product creation process.
• Communicate and lead the product creation process to ensure all projects meet all key meeting timelines and category product deadlines. Work to create a process where all projects are completed on time, have manufacturability, proven and tested, meet design intent as well as performance intent and are profitable. Lead the athletic team to develop sports trend reports, market research and sales analysis.
• Ensures category product offering is proven and tested, that best practices are established, understood and maintained. Collaborates with Product Testing to create seasonal testing plans.
• Partners with senior management and retail partners to set initial sales productivity and profitability goals from line plan and product brief stage. Monitor specific project costing at critical stages during the process and ensure margin goals of the retailer are achieved. Must have the ability to understand and analyze all financial aspects of the business.
• Manages team and individual goals. Coaches staff to create opportunities for staff development. 
• Leads by examples as well as facilitates and expedites the growth and development of the product creation team. 
• Communicate product development timelines to all involved parties and ensure that teams adhere to deadlines to deliver completed lines in timely fashion.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s Degree       
• Experience in a retail background with a strong grasp of financials
• 5 years solid brand athletic footwear experience and at least 3 years management experience.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills; ability to communicate the vision for the brand at all levels (both internal and with Clients)
• Strong organizational skills; ability to effectively manage multiple responsibilities and respond well under pressure and/or deadlines
• Able to communicate and keep large groups of people on schedule
• Trend sense of products (footwear), understand the broader market segments
• Technical performance footwear experience preferred