Director - Visual and Merchandise Presentation

Director - Visual and Merchandising Presentation

The Director - Visual and Merchandising Presentation executes the brand's merchandise presentation strategy to maximize sales, optimize inventory turnover, and improve store labor efficiency. This role leads the end-to-end development of store planograms and drives the testing and refinement of visual initiatives designed to increase customer engagement and profitability. Serving as a key bridge between the field and executive leadership, they align visual standards with corporate business objectives. The director manages the visual merchandising budget and expense forecasting while staying at the forefront of industry trends. This role oversees strategic vendor partnerships and leads the development of innovative store fixtures to enhance product storytelling and durability. In collaboration with Real Estate and Store Floor Planning, they optimize store layouts and remodels to ensure every physical touchpoint delivers a high-impact brand experience and a seamless customer journey.
Major Activities

Lead the Visual Innovation Lab, serving as the primary architect for physical brand storytelling. Orchestrate the development of immersive product presentations that bridge the gap between creative vision and in-store execution for all retail locations.
Direct the end-to-end visual merchandising strategy to maximize top-line sales and margin performance, leveraging data-driven presentation standards to optimize inventory productivity and operational efficiency.
Manage the creation and maintenance of store planograms for all store formats, overseeing new and existing product merchandising and presentation direction
Ensure accurate execution of new product introduction and product exit strategies through creation of merchandising direction, including strategic placement of product and supportive presentation elements
Direct the development and implementation of visual merchandising standards to drive brand consistency. Establish high-performance benchmarks that balance premium brand aesthetics with strategic space optimization to maximize square-footage productivity.
Develop, test, launch, and refine new initiatives to drive store engagement and profitability
Build and sustain key relationships with executive leadership teams and communicate effectively with stakeholders throughout all levels of the organization to drive alignment and understand their strategic business initiatives to support with visual merchandise presentation
Be the conduit between Merchandising, Marketing, and Digital to ensure a frictionless omni customer experience
Oversee the capital investment strategy for fixture innovation to support future seasonal sets and long-term retail evolution.
Responsible for planning and forecasting expense budgets associated with everyday product presentation, as well as any new fixtures needed for future sets
Maintain a current and thorough understanding of best-in-class practices and trends in visual merchandising, presentation, and décor
Collaborate with store floor planning and real estate on refinement of layouts of merchandising aspects of new stores and remodels
Proactively identify operational improvements and work to formulate, propose, influence, and implement necessary changes
Other duties as assigned
Preferred Education/Experience

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
Minimum Type of Experience Required

Microsoft Office Suite; including PowerPoint and Outlook
10+ years of retail leadership experience
Experience in customer experience design and visual merchandising development
Competencies Required:

Proven ability to influence change across the organization by developing collaborative relationships with others, anticipate barriers to progress and proactively reroute, and build a brand through a culture of service and operational excellence
Strong leader with strategic business management skills, who can appropriately shift between tactical and strategic perspectives
Results oriented, comfortable with ambiguity and possess versatile communication styles
Ability to manage, engage, and develop a diverse team, working collaboratively with business partners and customers, sharing ideas and developing plans in line with the company mission and merchandise strategy
Ability to influence, lead, motivate, establish project schedules, and execute within specified timeline
Success with interpreting data, turning insight into action, delivering on budgets and expense control
Desired Characteristics:

Passionate customer advocate with strong leadership presence
Experience developing executive presentations and storytelling
Initiative-taker, elevated level of energy, motivated, and is able to work independently
Ability to mobilize teams into action and manage multiple projects with demanding platforms
Forward thinking, challenges the status quo and innovates to find a better way
Creates environment where team members enjoy being on the team