Director of Merchandising International Distributors

Columbia Sportswear • Portland, OR

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

This position is designated as a hybrid role based out of the company's headquarters near Portland, Oregon, with an expectation for employees to work onsite four days per week. The International Distributors - Regional Merchandising Director leads the Apparel Merchandising team in the continued development and growth across channels. The role involves creating strategies focused on delivering consumer-right assortments across the marketplace matrix, balancing brand-heat initiatives with volume-driving items. It supports the regional GM through the Go-to-Market process by leading the product handover to sales. The Director builds strong partnerships with channel leaders to effectively influence, define, and implement segmentation strategies necessary to maximize revenue and profitability. The role also involves translating company strategy into functional and team goals, monitoring progress, removing barriers, and identifying and allocating resources. It acts as a change catalyst to meet evolving business needs, creates a high-performance culture by setting clear performance objectives, providing ongoing feedback, and developing talent. Additionally, it drives team engagement and promotes an inclusive work environment using effective communication, team building, and collaboration practices, and maintains efficient operations in compliance with regulations, policies, and safety standards.

Requirements

• Bachelor's or master's degree, or applicable certification or equivalent experience.
• Typically requires 10 years functional experience in merchandising leadership.
• Experience managing high level individual contributors and subordinate managers/sr. managers.
• Provides leadership and direction through multiple managers/sr. managers.
• Possesses a growth mindset with strong learning agility and team-oriented leadership style.

Responsibilities

• Develops and communicates the global Merchandising plan and vision to members of senior management for approval, including long and short-term goals and global brand product strategy.
• Maintains positive open lines of communication with all management, staff, and other departments in order to contribute to the smooth flow of information and efficient operation of the organization.
• Ensures proper Merchandising resources are employed to execute against brand strategy.
• Leads the creation of regional Merchandising strategies, both seasonal and long term, including line pricing, product flow, product segmentation and product differentiation across all categories.
• Owns Sales meeting product content and execution planning, process, communication, and presentation seasonally.
• Collaborates with Sales management for the budget, intended outcome, and coordination of agendas, timing, samples and presentation format.
• Participates in other global sales meetings as well.
• Delivers presentations for Sales meetings, articulating focused strategies for successful product introductions.
• Partners with global product and other category merch on short and long-term directional vision.
• Works to align regional growth goals and consumer trends with broader objectives.
• Ensures that key stakeholders in the regions are consulted during key checkpoints.
• Influences with data and storytelling to secure regional needs.
• Partners with Finance to manage margin and profitability for seasonal product line to hit seasonal targets.
• Leads workstreams with Costing, Global Merch, and Finance with the regional Merchandising team to identify strategies and tactics to deliver upon profitability goals each season.
• Builds team expertise using analytical workstreams and market/consumer knowledge.
• Works with senior leadership to influence decisions and inspire change at scale.
• Translates company strategy into functional and team goals, monitors progress, removes barriers, and identifies and allocates resources.
• Acts as a change catalyst to meet evolving business needs.
• Creates a high-performance culture by setting clear performance objectives, providing ongoing feedback, and developing talent to build new skills and capabilities.
• Drives team engagement and promotes an inclusive work environment using effective communication, team building, and collaboration practices.
• Maintains efficient operations in compliance with regulations, policies, and safety standards.

Benefits

• Benefits package that includes a variety of services and products to help make your life and work more rewarding.
• Benefit programs contribute to overall employee well-being by aligning those programs with the fundamental elements of well-being: physical, social/emotional, financial, career and community.
• 401k plan plus a generous company match.
• Medical insurance.
• Dental insurance.
• Vision insurance.
• Life Insurance.
• Disability insurance.
• Flexible spending accounts.
• Health savings account.
• Assortment of voluntary benefit offerings (accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and legal services).
• EAP + which is free and confidential 24/7/365 counseling services.
• Extensive wellness benefits.
• Employee discounts.
• Generous time off program.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees