SVP Private Brands

Staples Inc.•Framingham, MA

4d•$270,000 - $385,000

About The Position

The Senior Vice President, Private Brands will serve as the enterprise leader responsible for advancing Staples’ Private Brands portfolio into a distinctive growth platform and strategic source of competitive advantage. Reporting to and partnering closely with the Chief Merchandising Officer, this executive will lead the strategy, innovation, development, sourcing, quality, and commercial performance of Staples’ proprietary brand portfolio across channels. This is a highly strategic general management role requiring a leader who can move beyond traditional private label management and build destination brands and products that customers actively choose for quality, innovation, trust, and value. The successful candidate will combine commercial judgment, brand-building capability, global sourcing expertise, product development discipline, data-driven decision making, and enterprise leadership to accelerate growth, expand margins, and strengthen customer loyalty.

Requirements

Senior executive experience leading a sizeable, branded product, private brand, merchandising, product development, consumer goods, retail, or sourcing organization.
Demonstrated record of delivering profitable growth, margin expansion, product innovation, and portfolio transformation at scale.
Experience operating in a complex, matrixed, global organization with significant cross-functional influence and enterprise-level accountability.
Strategic enterprise leader with the ability to set vision, simplify complexity, make disciplined choices, and deliver results through others.
High-impact communicator who can engage senior executives, cross-functional partners, suppliers, and teams with clarity and credibility.
Change leader with the resilience, pace, and influence required to elevate Private Brands into a larger strategic growth platform.
Deep knowledge of brand strategy, product development, customer insights, category management, portfolio optimization, commercial activation, and global sourcing.
Ability to combine commercial, creative, operational, analytical, and financial thinking into an integrated Product Brands strategy.
Strong understanding of digital commerce, data-driven decision making, AI-enabled insights, and changing customer discovery behaviors.
Customer-obsessed, commercially sharp, intellectually curious, and externally aware.
Balances strategic ambition with operational discipline and a bias for action.
Collaborative, low-ego leader who builds trust, raises standards, develops strong talent, and can network well across the organization.

Responsibilities

Define and execute a multi-year strategy for Staples’ Product Brands portfolio that drives profitable growth, increased penetration, customer loyalty, and enterprise value creation.
Operate as the general manager of the Private Brands business, with clear accountability for portfolio performance, innovation, quality, cost productivity, re-sourcing, mitigating tariff impacts and commercial outcomes.
Translate macroeconomic shifts, customer behavior, workplace trends, and competitive dynamics into actionable brand and product strategies.
Partner across Merchandining, Sales, Digital, Inventory Management, Finance, Supply Chain, Legal, and Stores to embed Product Brands into the broader enterprise growth agenda. Driving strategic alignment with 4 channels, encompassing B2B and B2C.
Shape a clear strategic roadmap that balances near-term financial delivery with long-term brand equity, differentiation, and category expansion.
Build a portfolio of trusted, differentiated products and solutions that customers seek out for superior value, quality, relevance, and reliability.
Lead brand architecture, positioning, segmentation, and portfolio management to ensure each brand and product has a clear role, customer target, and growth path.
Use customer insights, competitive intelligence, research, behavioral data, and market signals to identify unmet needs and whitespace opportunities.
Champion innovation that solves real customer problems and strengthens Staples’ position as a provider of products for work.
Create a disciplined innovation pipeline with faster concept-to-market timelines, test-and-learn practices, and measurable commercial impact.
Oversee end-to-end product lifecycle management from concept development through commercialization, launch, optimization, and rationalization.
Ensure Private Brands meet national brand quality expectations while delivering compelling value to customers.
Advance design, packaging, engineering, quality assurance, safety, and compliance standards across the portfolio.
Identify and scale opportunities in core, adjacent, and emerging categories that strengthen Staples’ relevance and margin profile.
Balance product innovation, simplification, assortment productivity, and lifecycle discipline to maximize portfolio performance.
Leverage customer data, AI, predictive analytics, search behavior, ratings, reviews, and digital signals to inform product creation, pricing, assortment, and portfolio decisions.
Build analytical capability that enables faster identification of trends, demand shifts, product gaps, and innovation opportunities.
Partner with digital and ecommerce teams to improve discoverability, conversion, content quality, and customer confidence across Staples.com, Staples Business.com and emerging marketplace commerce platforms.
Prepare the Private Brands portfolio for AI-enabled shopping, agentic commerce, and digitally influenced customer journeys.
Use insight and analytics to create a structural advantage over national brands and traditional competitors.
Lead a global sourcing strategy that balances cost competitiveness, quality, speed, innovation, supply continuity, and risk management.
Deliver sustainable cost productivity and total delivered cost improvement while protecting customer experience and product integrity.
Strengthen supplier relationships, negotiation capability, manufacturing partnerships, and global sourcing governance.
Build supply chain resilience through diversification, contingency planning, geopolitical awareness, and risk-adjusted sourcing decisions.
Ensure appropriate oversight of regulatory, product safety, environmental, and compliance requirements (product and packaging) across the supply base.
Develop strategic relationships with manufacturers, suppliers, designers, innovation partners, and technology providers that enhance Staples’ product and brand capabilities.
Evaluate opportunities for co-development, licensing, exclusivity, and partnership models that accelerate differentiation and speed to market.
Position Staples as a preferred innovation and sourcing partner within the global supplier ecosystem.
Lead, develop, and inspire a high-performing organization across Category Management, Project Management, Analytics, Sourcing, Engineering, Design, Quality, Logistics, Content, Packaging and Commercial Activation.
Build next-generation capabilities in innovation, analytics, negotiation, customer insight, portfolio management, and strategic problem solving.
Influence senior leaders across the enterprise and align cross-functional teams around a common Private Brands vision.
Create a strong leadership bench, succession pipeline, and culture of accountability, collaboration, pace, and continuous improvement.