About this team:

The Merchandising team creates and executes transformative global product strategies that ensure we have the right assortment in the right place at the right time to fulfill our guests’ unmet needs to deepen our guest relationships, grow our brand and deliver on our long-term enterprise goals. We possess deep awareness and intuition of global marketplace dynamics and guest needs and use this knowledge to identify opportunities to maximize guest demand.

A day in the life:

The Global Associate Merchant, with guidance and collaboration from the Senior Merchant and Manager, is responsible for creating, curating and bringing product strategies and the global product assortment to life for a subset of styles or a category, through seasonal line plans, informed by guest insights that reflect global and regional market needs. The Global Associate Merchant is responsible for accurate data entry and maintenance of the styles they manage. The Global Associate Merchant is a strategist who, with support from the Senior Merchant and Manager, partners with the Product team to ensure commercial viability across the global line delivered at GLR to drive seasonal buying, brand and marketing activities. The Global Associate Merchant collaborates with partners across the business to ensure product needs associated with critical enterprise priorities are identified, planned for and executed against, and ensures brand consistency and regional relevance to maximize profitability and sales across product classes, key items and channels. This Global Associate Merchant is on the career growth path to be developed into a Merchant.

• Leads the successful creation, execution and maintenance of a line plan for a subset of styles, delivering to target, in their assigned product categories, that contribute to the financial success of the company.

• With guidance from their Manager and Senior Merchant, delivers profitable assortments driving IMU and cost goals needed to meet and exceed targets

• With guidance from their Manager and Senior Merchants, develops Global pricing product architecture

• With guidance from their Manager and Senior Merchants, supports/owns the pre-season planning process, breaking down roadmap stories into seasonal line plan and ensuring regional territory category needs are integrated, through ongoing partnerships with Regional teams

• With guidance from their Manager and Senior Merchants, ensures briefs are met throughout product creation process, from line plan through to regional handover

• Brief colour flow for global assortment to ensure clear consistent profitable storytelling

• With guidance from their Manager and Senior Merchants, proactively gathers, analyzes and drives insight from the competitive landscape, global/regional teams and cross functional partners across all channels for pre-season planning and hindsights

• Manage and create key franchises and product lifecycle for a subset of styles in assigned product categories including introduction, build and retirement

• Provides leadership and functional excellence for their respective activity/category merchandising and design partners to meet key Merchandising Go-To-Market deadlines

• Communicate category assortment to all stakeholders to drive consistent Merchandising messages globally

• Bring global storytelling to life in partnership with Brand and Marketing teams

• Builds the architecture of the assortment in collaboration with Design and Product Development team

• With guidance from their Manager and Senior Merchant, review, validate and sign-off on sketches and protos against line plan brief ensuring all global guest needs are met and accountable for adoption ratio

• Partners with Demand Planning and Sourcing teams to provide units and style volumes for global forecasting and vendor allocation

• Be the voice of the guest and provide considered and clear feedback during fittings

• Create and present global product visual flow and communicate seasonal assortment strategies quarterly to all regional partners

• Responsible for briefing content for packaging, product naming and features and benefits

• Responsible for accurate data entry and maintenance of the styles they manage and support of the team

• Responsible for global assortment handover to Regional Teams

• Continuously monitor regional selling results and connect with regional teams to understand global

product and financial performance

• Support team with global market and guest insight research

• Support Global Merchant and Senior Merchant on content creation for key go to market gates

Qualifications:

• BA, BSc, BBA, BComm, (or equivalent), specialization in Retail or Merchandising Management an asset

• Minimum two years of global merchandising and/or regional buying experience preferred

• Proficient in Microsoft Office Programs- Mastery in excel, preferred experience in Merchandising Software

• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret multiple data points across numerous channels and market segments

• Financial acumen and understanding of Retail Math

• Ability to balance analytical and creative tasks

• Preliminary understanding of financial insights on current business performance, in order to make recommendations to inform future range plans, with guidance from Manager and Senior Team Members

• Acute eye for product and colour trends

• Aware of macro lifestyle and fashion trends and how this relates to the active industry

• Ability to enroll and clearly communicate vision, class strategy and feedback to key partners

• Strong communication skills both written and verbal, demonstrative ability to present to peers and leaders

• Ability to accurately and efficiently manage data entry

• Highly organized with a keen eye for the detail

• Ability to multitask and operate in a fast-paced environment

• Willingness to travel (domestic and international) and work on retail floor

• Acknowledge the presence of choice in every moment and take personal responsibility for your life.
• Possess an entrepreneurial spirit and continuously innovate to achieve great results.
• Communicate with honesty and kindness and create the space for others to do the same.
• Lead with courage, knowing the possibility of greatness is bigger than the fear of failure.
• Foster connection by putting people first and building trusting relationships.
• Integrate fun and joy as a way of being and working, aka doesn’t take yourself too seriously.