FP Movement Merchandise Manager - Outerwear

FP Movement•Philadelphia, PA

7d•Onsite

About The Position

The FP Movement Merchandise Manager is primarily responsible for increasing sales volume and profit for their assigned merchandise categories. This role involves influencing buyers to translate customer insights, competitive analysis, and fashion knowledge into actionable strategies that drive category growth and profitability, aligning with company objectives. The Merchandise Manager is accountable for the team's work quality and for fostering collaboration between internal talent and external partners to create unique products that enhance the Free People Movement shopping experience. A key aspect of this role is utilizing fashion intuition to guide the merchandising of product categories.

Requirements

Entrepreneurial spirit: Thinks and acts like an owner.
Ability to recognize new trends, items, looks, and products early in their 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, and its role in the final merchandising assortment edit.
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 team direction.
Personnel skills to lead, develop, and coach people, recognizing that building a team is critical to company 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

Responsibilities

Strategizing the growth of both sales and profit for all categories managed.
Understanding annual category growth and communicating sales potential to 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.
Ensuring correct driver distortions are made for proper fashion positioning in the upcoming season.
Bringing a customer and market perspective to the design process to ensure commercial viability of final line recommendations.
Establishing and maintaining peer relationships with design and production leadership for an open exchange of market and business information.
Coordinating and providing information to the production function for production planning needs.
Developing and monitoring sourcing and production strategies for private label and market vendors.
Identifying marketing and promotional opportunities for 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 to ensure a customer-oriented final mix.
Playing an active role in determining in-store product placement and prioritization.
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 and managing the vendor lifecycle.
Coaching buyers on using the market to react to business changes and refresh assortments.
Providing buyers with regular job performance feedback and annual performance evaluations to develop promotable talent.