Director of Retail Operations

The Director of Retail is responsible to ensure Assouline retail excellence and experience is upheld in all stores including selling ceremony, CRM, merchandising, visual merchandising, training, and customer service as well as operational excellence. You are responsible for maintaining standards – including all practices and procedures, maximizing margin potential, and identifying and implementing new product and service offers. You will design and execute innovative content programs that educate, support, and drive sales targets for our boutique teams.

You will help shape the overall retail learning strategy and deliver all the necessary in-store coaching activities to help the teams reach excellence and create memorable experiences for our guests.

Responsibilities:

Business Development

• You will build strong partnerships with key leaders (VP- Commercial, Human Resources, Marketing, Finance, Operations, Founders etc.) to design and deliver content that will strengthen the retail fleet mindset, performance, knowledge, and passion for the brand.
• You will support initiatives to build our retail community, encouraging best practice sharing across different touch points.
• Collaborate with regional wholesale teams to execute and manage any third party or temporary shop-in-shop or pop-up opportunities.
• Develop and understand competitive solutions with Market Intelligence and Market Development.
• Work closely with the Global Marketing and PR team to drive product strategy, creative asset development, and visual merchandising for Assouline retail.
• New Boutique Openings - Validate the store operations components of all new boutiques including openings, renovations, relocations, and closures.
• Drive program to Clienteling strategy.

Retail Operations

• Liaise with VP -Commercial and Finance to produce workable rolling forecasts and Budgets.
• Develop retail vision, strategy, inventory accuracy, and plan to drive top-line growth and bottom-line profitability.
• Maintain proper inventory levels, ensure stocking, implement purchasing plans and maintain contact with suppliers to ensure maximum efficiency in meeting sales goals.
• Manage all controllable costs with a view to maintaining profitability.
• Work with the E-Commerce team to refine omni-channel strategies to continuously deliver a seamless end-to-end customer experience that spans both online and stores.
• Created and analyze reports for retail business insights, analytics, performance management across the Assouline retail business portfolio.
• Drive retail VM standards of excellence within all global retail.

Team Development

• Monitor program adoption by sales associates and deliver training to build skills and change mindsets.
• Contributes to identify training needs and is able to follow-up with proposals on learning journeys intended to develop retail staff’s competences.
• Execute a CRM strategy that establishes strong client relationships that allow for continuity and long-term representation.
• Responsible for learning programs roll-out and trainings delivery, adapting content and format to the audience based on their level as well as local context.
• Build selling programs, competitions, and incentive programs to drive team.

Skills and abilities:

• 7+ years of experience as a Retail Store Manager/ Director
• Ability to travel up to 20%+ of the time
• Self-starter
• Experienced in creating learning journey and training content
• Full understanding of the retail environment and Luxury Business
• In-store expertise and client management practice are requested
• Sincere interest in people’s development
• Passionate and energetic, communicates self-confidence and reliability.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite (Powerpoint, Excel)
• Excellent communication and presentation skills; Community facilitator
• Curious and strong interpersonal/relationship building skills
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment
• Strong and proactive problem solving

The appointed candidate will be offered a salary within the range of $150,000-$175,000 annually. Please note that the foregoing compensation information is a good-faith assessment associated with this position only and is provided pursuant to the New York City Salary Transparency Law.