About the role:
Director Category Management – Fashion and Lifestyle is the single-threaded leader for the Softlines and Lifestyle Product Line (includes all fashion categories such as Apparel, Shoes, Jewelry, Home and Kitchen, etc.) owning both the business and the product. She/He is the top person responsible and accountable for revenue, cost structure
and profit/margin/free-cash flow. This is a large and complex role that influences and implements long-term strategy and drives execution. The role directly influences senior leaders including the CEO. The position reports to the VP of the retail organization. Decisions are both strategic and tactical in nature and affect the overall direction of a work group and are pertinent to the operations of the entire organization.
Scope of responsibility includes customer/website experience, vendor Management, inventory management, marketing, pricing, and other day-to-day operational management for the Product line.
Director Category Management leads leaders of categories and staff functions such as product management, site merchandising and inventory management. This is a senior leadership positions where the incumbent is expected to assess the right balance of risk to allocate right resources, anticipate bottlenecks, provide escalation management, anticipate and make tradeoffs, balance the business needs versus financial and/or technical constraints and encourages risk taking behavior to maximize business benefit.
Description of responsibilities:
A. Business/product strategy & customer experience
• Single threaded leader for the Product line
• Responsible for end-to-end business strategy and customer experience & offering, including selection
• Owns and identifies business growth plan
• Owns user experience, website, features across businesses
• Leverages technical teams to deliver against business objectives
B. Business plan execution
• Sets and measures goals and targets across categories and functions
• Drives improvements to business processes and ensures quality
C. Financial accountability
• Accountable for financial performance of the business
D. Customer acquisition & retention
• Responsible for customer acquisition and retention
• Innovates on behalf of customers - develops and drives business growth strategy
E. Operations
• Owns day-to-day business operations such as key vendor negotiation, inventory management, pricing etc.
• Drives and measures quality in internal and external processes
F. Organizational and people leadership
• Has direct reporting responsibility for multiple teams. Provides credible leadership of both business and product teams
• Effectively manages leaders and organizations
• Influences across the company on behalf of the business
