Since its launch in 1993 with a collection of six essential handbags, Kate Spade New York has always been colorful, bold, and optimistic. Today, it is a global lifestyle brand that designs extraordinary things for the everyday, delivering seasonal collections of handbags, ready-to-wear, jewelry, footwear, home décor, and more. Known for its rich heritage and unique brand DNA, Kate Spade New York offers a distinctive point of view and celebrates communities of women around the globe who live their perfectly imperfect lifestyles.
Kate Spade New York is part of the Tapestry portfolio – a global house of brands committed to stretching what’s possible
Primary Purpose:
This position operates as the lead merchant for Kate Spade SEA/ANZ DTC business covering Retail, Outlet & e-com channels. She/he is responsible for building and setting the strategic product assortment direction for Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand markets. She/he is to work closely with global merchandising to interpreting the creative vision into short-, mid- and long-term merchandising strategies, with the local market and customer needs in mind.
She/he will lead a team that covers buying, merchandise planning, inventory management and allocations. Importantly she/he is to establish strategic merchandise plans to achieve category KPI’s: sales, margin, sku productivity, WOS, Inventory turn. She/he would provide ongoing feedback around merchandise needs to Global Merchandising team. She/he should be a leader who will bring style, taste and a strong, unifying creative merchandising voice to the team and the SEA/ANZ market.
The successful individual will leverage their proficiency to...
Buying, Inventory Management and Allocations
- Partner with SEA/ANZ brand leads to formulate buying strategy and lead team to execute the buy
- Develop assortments by analyzing product performance, customer feedback, consumer trend and competitive landscape.
- Manage open-to-buy to meet financial targets and productivity metrics at the SKU level for performance, sales, inventory, receipt, and margin goals.
- Partner closely with Global Inventory Planning function to review, understand and determine opportunities in future sales and investment plans
- Manage SKU lifecycle and react to in season sales to inform the strategy going forward.
- Lead Merchandise Planning and Allocation strategies to address product liabilities and develop action plan to liquidate in a timely and profitable manner
- Effectively use existing resources and tools to monitor business on a regular basis, and report on weekly business trends and implement actions where needed
- Analyze and reforecast business to help implement mid to longer team strategies to ensure plan is achieved, including adjusting product flow and inventory management.
- Hindsight seasonal product performance and share season over season learnings based on customer patterns.
- Research new trends or advances in product line to present a strong point of view that drives appropriate buying decisions.
Cross-functional Collaboration
- Holistic approach to developing and commercializing the collection with all related business partners including but not limited to Retail Management, VM, Marketing, eCom and L&D teams.
- Lead, develop and motivate the team to achieve the business objectives outlined above.
- Engage in ongoing communication with Global Merchandising on local market needs and trends, that includes but not limited to special products, new store openings and new initiatives.
- Conduct regular market research on industry trends, competitors, sales and product performance and include insights into strategy i.e. local price management
Team & People Development
- Manage team to meet key deliverables
- Monitor and review individual performance and set clear development objectives
- Provide people leadership through guidance, training and feedback to foster development of direct team
The accomplished individual will possess...
- Bachelor’s Degree with 7 years’ experience in buying for a vertical retailer
- Strong product sensibility; proven experience in driving product and merchandising strategies, and partnering with cross functional teams to drive commercially successful collections
- Strong experience managing multiple categories for fashion retail, luxury brands will be a plus
- Strong managerial skills in leading teams
- Strong customer orientation and commercial drive.
- Acute understanding of the marketplace and consumer preferences; competitor landscape
- Proficient in retail math, excel and all Microsoft applications
- Ability to multitask and focus in a busy atmosphere
- Ability to build strong working relationships with cross functional teams
- Possess strong presentation, listening, verbal and written communication skills
- Strong analytical skills with experience partnering or leading buying and planning teams.
- Demonstrated organizational skills
- Candidates with more experience maybe considered for a Senior Manager position
Our Competencies for All Employees
- Drive for Results: Can be counted on to exceed goals successfully; is constantly and consistently one of the top performers; very bottom-line oriented; steadfastly pushes self and others for results.
- Customer Focus: Is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers; gets first-hand customer information and uses it for improvements in products and services; acts with customers in mind; establishes and maintains effective relationships with customers and gains their trust and respect.
- Creativity: Comes up with a lot of new and unique ideas; easily makes connections among previously unrelated notions; tends to be seen as original and value-added in brainstorming settings.
- Interpersonal Savvy: Relates well to all kinds of people, up, down, and sideways, inside and outside the organization; builds appropriate rapport; builds constructive and effective relationships; uses diplomacy and tact; can diffuse even high-tension situations comfortably.
- Learning on the Fly: Learns quickly when facing new problems; a relentless and versatile learner; open to change; analyzes both successes and failures for clues to improvement; experiments and will try anything to find solutions; enjoys the challenge of unfamiliar tasks; quickly grasps the essence and the underlying structure of anything.
- Perseverance: Pursues everything with energy, drive, and a need to finish; seldom gives up before finishing, especially in the face of resistance or setbacks.
- Dealing with Ambiguity: Can effectively cope with change; can shift gears comfortably; can decide and act without having the total picture; isn’t upset when things are up in the air; doesn’t have to finish things before moving on; can comfortably handle risk and uncertainty.
Our Competencies for All People Managers
- Strategic Agility: Sees ahead clearly; can anticipate future consequences and trends accurately; has broad knowledge and perspective; is future oriented; can articulately paint credible pictures and visions of possibilities and likelihoods; can create competitive and breakthrough strategies and plans.
- Building Effective Teams: Blends people into teams when needed; creates strong morale and spirit in his/her team; shares wins and successes; fosters open dialogue; lets people finish and be responsible for their work; defines success in terms of the whole team; creates a feeling of belonging in the team.
- Managerial Courage: Doesn’t hold back anything that needs to be said; provides current, direct, complete, and “actionable” positive and corrective feedback to others; lets people know where they stand; faces up to people problems on any person or situation (not including direct reports) quickly and directly; is not afraid to take negative action when necessary.
