Aje Athletica Head of Merchandise

AJE ATHLETICA is a premium athleticwear brand created through the lens of the Aje fashion house. Designed to enrich physical performance and support through well-being, each AJE ATHLETICA collection encompasses 70% consciously sourced materials. AJE ATHLETICA recognises that the balance between humanity and planet Earth is the ultimate in wellness.

AJE ATHLETICA invites you to be a part of this new era as we have an exciting opportunity for an AJE ATHLETICA Head of Merchandise, to join our Head Office Team. This exciting role will lead the business through its next phase of growth. The AJE ATHLETICA Head Of Merchandise plays an integral leadership role, influencing initiatives that ultimately contribute to our ambitious performance objectives.

**As the AJE ATHLETICA Head of Merchandise, your tasks will include**:
**Strategic Processes and Reporting
- Prepare and manage the company OTB strategy, in line with the annual performance objectives for all sales channels (retail, wholesale, e-commerce, exit pathways).
- Ensure the company’s short
- and long-term revenue, profitability and performance objectives can be met from a merchandise perspective by preparing and maintaining the WSSI to benchmark.
- Proactively forecast and respond to risks and trends, in relation to both internal insights resulting from trade and general market opportunities.
- Design and direct rigorous core merchandise planning processes, ensuring product in season are maximised for the lifecycle of the product and aligned to the overall company direction
- Oversee the department’s processes for intake, allocation, and replenishment, ensuring the accuracy of future sales forecasts for optimised stock levels
- Monitor trading performance each season and evaluate exit strategies to maximise sales and margin
- Deliver and embed consistent merchandise and reporting tools and processes that enable product performance awareness and insights for the wider business.
- Develop and pitch seasonal category plans, identifying opportunities to drive growth and determine product sales mix, stock levels, retail prices and margins.
- Oversee the strategy of store grading plans across distribution channels based on display capacity, demographic, and current sales trends
- Drive the assortment planning methodology, determining the ideal assortment, both in width and depth and provide trend analysis to support informed and considered design development and buying decisions
- Drive the importance of building out the demand-planning capabilities of AJE ATHLETICA across multiple geographies
- Ensure appropriate stock levels to meet new store openings, closures and marketing activity.
- Analyse and recommend strategies to trade team’s, aligned with business positioning objectives as a premium/low-promo brand, to manage aged stock ensuring mínimal aged stock for each season end.
- Integrate and champion the brand’s key customer profiles and their tendencies into range plans and your merchandise recommendations
- Provide quarterly SWOT analysis on inventory and range to help drive strategic decision-making with senior leadership and key stakeholders
- Plan and coordinate the delivery of profitable and on-brand outcomes from a Merchandise and buying perspective.
- Play a critical role of hosting and sharing learns and new objectives on behalf of merchandise and for trade teams at seasonal range presentations, buying sessions and post-season reviews.
- Identify competitor trends including pricing strategies for different markets to propose growth opportunities across the merchandise business

**Collaboration and Leadership
- Collaborate with stakeholders to strategise and identify opportunities to drive sales and competitive advantage
- Conduct regular store visits for direct insight into performance such as right product mix in the right stores and feedback on product and planning
- Lead and manage the Buying and Planning Assistant in the development, analysis and revision of sales, inventory, and profit goals to ensure it is executed correctly and according to deadlines
- Work in collaboration with the production team on a weekly basis to understand any issues that affect planned delivery of ranges to stores
- Meet regularly with the executive team to review trading performance and present initiatives to deliver key strategic objectives
- Collaborate with other departments to obtain a thorough understanding of the AJE ATHLETICA customer types on our channels and ensuring the wider business inventory insights and strategies are reflective of these different types of customers and their needs
- Provide analysis framework for Design line plan and assortment development
- Work closely with IT to evaluate the existing planning systems and recommend improvements, as needed.

**You will bring**:

- 5-7 years’ experience working within a multi-channel (retail, wholesale, e-comm, marketplace) is critical
- Experience working with multi-brand/ vertical brand ex