Buying & Merchandising Director - Apparel/retail

**BUYING & MERCHANDISING DIRECTOR **- APPAREL/RETAIL - MENA**

**Location**: Relocate to Kuwait

**Package**: circa £150,000 base salary (tax free) + relocation costs, healthcare, pension, private education for children and excellent bonus scheme.

**Reports**:Reports into the Brand VP with a dotted line report to the VP of merchandising for the Whole group

**Manages**: Both the Buying and Merchandising team for the Brand

**Size**:30 department stores with circa 30+ brands including host brands and home brands + Online business in the region (MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA)

**THE BUSINESS**

This brilliant executive position provides a fantastic opportunity to some to relocation the Middle east, joining one the leading Retail business in the region. The business has an exceptional reputation as a leading franchise operator, working with iconic international brands from around the world. The business has a strong track record for their career development opportunities and employees joining from abroad are extremely well support in their new company and new city.

Emerging from the Pandemic, the business has gone through some restructuring and new brand partnerships, insuring it offers reflects the evolving choices, preferences and lifestyle of their customer base. The business operates across retail apparel, food and leisure. This particular opportunity would take a key leadership position in the company wide retail apparel division.

**THE ROLE**

This opportunity will head up Buying and Merchandising (with a predominant focusing on Merchandising) for one particular brand within the greater business. This brand is a department store style business which is incredibly popular in the MENA region, offering a wide range of long standing and new brand lines. Due to the multi brand inventory and inclusive brand operator agreements this is a complex business for product buying. The Hiring team are looking for a dynamic and engaged individual who has an excellent merchandising background with a deep understanding of the full product lifecycle.

**RESPONSIBILITIES**

**The Opportunity**:

- VP or Divisional Director opportunity(depending on experience) coving company wide merchandising for Apparel - the largest revenue stream within the business turnover approaching $2bn.
- Working across over 20 brands with a diverse product range
- Based in Kuwait, report to the President, overseeing all Merchandising for the division
- Ensure the division merchandise line plan addresses the divisional vision
- Responsible fore Merchandise planning, OTB, Forward planning, stock management/inventory flow and maximising sales and profit margins.
- Work Collaboratively with key stakeholders; influence and drive consensus of short
- and long-term range merchandising strategies and objective across all brands
- Influence and develop host brand relations, driving communications from inventory perspective
- Building effective long-term relations
- Highlight and Implement customer and market perspectives into the merchandising development process.
- Quantitate approach - Analyze inventory flow within each brand, reforecast and report the financial performance across the brands through the monthly/quarterly presentation of P&L
- To ensure margin targets are achieved through timely management of OTB, stock allocation and replenishment, terminal stock management and retail price architecture
- Work closely with Supply Chain to ensure product availability aligns with business needs, exit strategies are planned, and appropriate tradeoffs are managed
- Foster a culture of collaboration across the organization to support merchandising decisions, directives and initiatives. To make recommendations basis success stories.
- To maintain strong internal and external relationships to benefit the business
- To coach, develop & mentor a team of multi category Senior Brand/ Merchandise & Planning Managers/ Directors to achieve "high performance”.

**The Requirements**:

- Individuals who have 5+ years experience in a Merchandising Director of Category Directory position in a multi brand Retail business
- Extensive international experience
- Extensive experience in a retail setting both with store and online points of sale
- Extensive experience working within a large format store environment, multi product/category across a large multi-country region
- Articulate senior leader with great communications and relationship building skills
- A strong people leader who can work collaboratively and engage and dynamic and diverse team
- Excellent knowledge of merchandising and assortment management tools
- Executive Experience in budget preparation, sales, purchase and stock forecasting, margin management
- Executive Experience of developing the price architecture of a multi category proposition to achieve the divisional goals
- Clear evidence of medium to long term financial planning/budgeting to achieve category goals
- Supplier knowledge, relationship building