FP Movement Merchandise Manager - Outerwear

Urban Outfitters•Philadelphia, PA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

The FP Movement Merchandise Manager is responsible for growing sales volume and profit for their assigned merchandise categories. This role involves influencing buyers to translate customer and competitive insights, along with fashion knowledge, into actions that drive category-specific growth and profitability. The Merchandise Manager is accountable for the quality of work produced by their team and for fostering collaboration between internal talent and external partnerships to create unique products that enhance the Free People Movement shopping experience. They are expected to use their fashion intuition to guide the merchandising of their product categories.

Requirements

Entrepreneurial spirit: Thinks and acts like an owner.
Ability to recognize a new trend, item, look, and product early in its lifecycle.
Ability to understand the magnitude of an opportunity and translate it into an assortment and buy.
Creative thinking is an asset in recognizing and managing in changing paradigms.
Understanding of the Free People Movement customer and shopping experience, recognizing it as the final category edit for the merchandising assortment.
Ability to identify, gather, and assimilate information specific to the customer.
Ability to transition from strategic (conceptual and planning) to execution.
Financial acumen and ability to manipulate numbers are critical for tactical objectives.
Ability to develop and communicate a business vision that translates into bottom-line performance.
Ability to delegate and direct the daily activities of buyers and provide direction to the team.
Personnel skills to lead, develop, and coach people, recognizing that building a team is critical to the Company’s success.
Ability to develop partnerships with other functional heads.
Ability to collect, assimilate, analyze, package, and present information to the Managing Director for informed decision-making and measurable action.
12+ years of buying and merchandising experience.
Located in Philadelphia, PA

Nice To Haves

The ability to translate customer and competitive information along with fashion knowledge into action that drives category specific growth and increased profitability.
Bringing together the collaborative efforts of internal talent and external partnerships resulting in unique product satisfying the Free People Movement shopping experience.
Use fashion intuition to direct the merchandising of product categories.
Establish and maintain a peer relationship with the design and production leadership and engage in a free and informal exchange of information regarding trends being observed in the market (customer, competition) and within the business.
Coordinate and provide information to the production function to facilitate production planning needs.
Determine the overall mix of market and private label product for each buying area to ensure that the final mix is ultimately customer oriented.
Manage the prioritization across all product categories falling within their responsibility – aligning with the creative team and to control the communication to the field.
Synthesize information they receive through regular business analysis, or specific analysis requested in response to trends or opportunities and to develop recommendations.
Look for opportunities to increase sales, improve margins, optimize inventories and decrease markdowns.
Coach and mentor buyers to maximize the market resources, margins, and timeliness of product.
Facilitate the process of developing new market vendors, watching the vendor life cycle and helping the buyers understand how to remove the vendors for the product mix before the lifecycle is complete.
Coach buyers on how to use the market to react to changes in business and how to freshen up an assortment to keep up with trend changes.
Provide buyers with regular job performance feedback and annual performance evaluations with the goal of developing someone to the point they are promotable.

Responsibilities

Strategizing the growth of both sales and profit for all categories managed.
Understanding the annual growth of each category and relaying sales potential to the Managing Director and Planning Director.
Driving bottom-up planning by prioritizing and allocating budgets across product categories after annual goals and seasonal business plans are approved.
Providing category-specific direction to buyers and reviewing detailed assortment plans with them.
Ensuring correct driver distortions are made to maintain proper fashion positioning for the upcoming season.
Bringing a customer and market perspective to the design process to ensure final line recommendations are commercially viable.
Establishing and maintaining peer relationships with design and production leadership for an open exchange of information on market and business trends.
Coordinating and providing information to the production function to facilitate production planning needs.
Developing and monitoring sourcing and production strategies for private label and market vendors.
Identifying marketing and promotional opportunities for their merchandise categories and contributing to marketing, packaging, and promotional plans.
Collaborating with the marketing team to create strong product narratives that resonate with customers and drive traffic.
Determining the overall mix of market and private label product for each buying area to ensure a customer-oriented final mix.
Playing an active role in determining in-store product placement, including prioritizing merchandise for prime placement and maximizing customer response.
Managing prioritization across all product categories within their responsibility, aligning with the creative team, and communicating to the field.
Synthesizing information from regular business analysis and specific trend/opportunity analyses to develop recommendations.
Identifying opportunities to increase sales, improve margins, optimize inventories, and decrease markdowns.
Coaching and mentoring buyers to maximize market resources, margins, and product timeliness.
Facilitating the development of new market vendors, monitoring vendor lifecycles, and helping buyers remove vendors before their lifecycle is complete.
Coaching buyers on using the market to react to business changes and refresh assortments to keep up with trend changes.
Providing buyers with regular job performance feedback and annual performance evaluations to develop promotable talent.