Director, Bloomie's

About:

Bloomingdale's makes fashion personal and fun, aspirational yet approachable. Our mission is to guide and inspire our customers to make style a source of creative energy in their lives. We will always strive to make Bloomingdale's like no other store in the world. Everyone plays a critical role to bring our mission to life. Regardless of position, we believe all colleagues have a voice and access to share their thoughts with every level of leadership. Our colleagues are passionate, driven, entrepreneurial and collaborative. We welcome and embrace diversity of background, thought and opinion while having a lot of fun along the way.

Job Overview:

The Director of Bloomie's will serve as the key project leader for the continued management and evolution of our small format concept, while also being a key player in the strategic development of future locations. Reporting to the Senior Director of Real Estate & Bloomie's, the Director will be responsible for guiding cross-functional teams in the formulation of strategies that will refine our formula for success and solidify the foundation for the small store concept to scale.

This is a highly entrepreneurial, analytical, and cross-functional role. The Director will be involved in all aspects of the creation process for new stores and set seasonal priorities/drive in-season management for the existing stores. The Director will identify and assess opportunities from multiple lenses (ex. customer, experience, financial, product/inventory, marketing), develop data-driven recommendations, structure tests and activate cross-functional leaders to shape execution plans.

Strategic merchandising and understanding the art of curation are key components of this role. The Director will work in tandem with Buyers and Planners across the organization during market periods and style outs to ensure the Bloomie's stores receive compelling, localized assortments. As this concept prepares to scale, you will be responsible for building out processes that support a long-term, sustainable approach to assortment curation, the creation of merchant tools and reporting that allow for greater visibility into performance and productivity within the concept, and a streamlined inventory management strategy that promotes bottom-line profitability.

The Director will lead weekly prioritization efforts with the local teams and a quarterly formal hindsight process. The Director will deliver compelling presentations to enhance decision making and propose solutions to open questions. Perform other duties as assigned.

You are a great fit if you have experience independently influencing cross-functional teams, curating assortments, and driving a business, marrying data with ground intelligence (art & science) and you're passionate about innovating omnichannel retail experiences. We're looking for someone who is comfortable operating in ambiguity and has analytical and leadership skills to surface meaningful insights and the interpersonal skills to communicate the insights in a compelling, relevant way to all levels of a large organization. Your ability to "tell the story" in a meaningful and actionable way is critical.

Essential Functions:

• Apply analytical rigor and creative problem-solving skills to create the scalable small store playbook. Assess new/innovative concepts and approaches.
• Independently lead cross-functional teams in both strategy formulation and follow-through to put strategies into action. Work with senior leaders to set seasonal priorities.
• Structure initiatives, resolve issues, drive to deadlines, measure progress, and prepare presentations.
• Merchandise: Set the seasonal merchandise/curation priorities for the store, lead in plan development, guide buying decisions across all families of business, pitch pop-ups to the market, manage in-season inventory and pricing strategies, streamline inventory movement, strengthen planning allocation processes, unlock curation approach at scale.
• Store: Meet weekly with the stores to gather ground intelligence and develop agile strategies across product, pricing, promotion and people. Set monthly visits to the stores.
• Marketing: Work with marketing functions to develop a compelling promotional and eventing strategy, test customer messaging strategies to drive customer engagement in the trade area at large.
• Experience: Partner with visual, customer experience and learning/development teams to iterate upon the customer journeys.
• Data: Create best practices to leverage new data/tools in the store that can scale to total company, partner with Business Intelligence to build out new tools that drive improved management and understanding of the Bloomie's business.
• Design: Participate in merchandise meetings for the development of new locations.
• Establish trusting relationships with key stakeholders across functions.
• Influence stakeholders across functions (without formal reporting lines).

Qualifications and Competencies:

Bachelor's Degree from a 4-year college or university

5+ years related experience

• Direct merchant/product curation experience is required
• Some project management experience preferred
• Practices open and continuous communication, values keeping others informed, effectively presenting information in a clear, concise manner
• Excellent leadership, facilitation, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to work across functional lines and at many levels
• Ability to think creatively, strategically and technically
• Ability to work a flexible schedule based on department and Company needs

Physical Requirements:

• Requires periods of walking, standing, communicating, reaching, crouching and climbing ladders
• Frequent use of computers and other technology, necessary to perform job functions
• Frequently lift/move up to 25lbs