Manager, Visual Merchandising

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.

A member of the Tapestry family, we are part of a global house of brands that has unwavering optimism and is committed to being innovative and wholly inclusive. Visit Our People page to learn more about Tapestry's commitment to equity, inclusion, and diversity.

Job Title: Manager, Visual Merchandising

The primary purpose of the Visual Merchandising Manager is to enhance the overall customer experience by creating an engaging and visually appealing environment that encourages shoppers to browse, try out products, and ultimately make purchases.

The successful individual will leverage their proficiency in Field Visual Merchandising in the following key areas:

Visual Merchandising and training

• Responsible for all visual merchandising aspects for all SEA, Australia, and New Zealand domestic and distribution channels.
• Manages in-store presentation strategy for Kate Spade SEA & ANZ by understanding trends and business requirements while working within established brand parameters.
• Manage the floor sets at flagship locations, oversee the mapping out of merchandising floor plans, and coordinate with production team for seasonal window and in-store activations.
• Travel to Kate Spade locations to train store management, VM in-store point persons and retail field teams on Kate Spade visual standards, window displays, props and fixtures usage.
• Visits stores on a regular basis to ensure guidelines and standards are being adhered to and consistency achieved.
• Work with brand team and NY VM to identify, develop and execute business opportunities.

Communication

• Interact frequently with stores via store visits, conference calls and seminars to teach, train and inspire store staff to achieve high Kate Spade Standards.
• Forecast and communicate quarterly schedules to support installations, training, new store openings and event support. Communicates to business partners in a proactive manner to ensure productivity and alignment.
• Present and communicates to brand team and distribution partners on each seasonal launch to share on key visual merchandising strategies.

Partnership

• Cross functional collaboration for successful 360 seasonal launches, partner closely with retail management, buying and marketing teams on strategizing each launch that drives the business.
• Bu ilding relationships through training and sharing knowledge, skill sets and techniques.

The accomplished individual will possess...

• 8-10 years of retail area/district visual merchandising experience.
• Experience facilitating store openings.
• Possess strong communication skills to interact, collaborate and influence with both internal and external Business Partners, and lead walk through with leaders.
• Ability to interpret visual merchandising presentations and relate them back to the store environment.
• Strong attention to detail e.g. standards, marketing, lighting, fixture placement, windows.
• Strong leadership skills to inspire, motivate and build respectful working relationships.
• Pro-active problem solver, ability to assess an issue and develop action steps for resolution.
• Ability to frequent travel.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite a plus.

Our Competencies for All Employees

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.
• Developing Direct Reports and Others:Provides challenging and stretching tasks and assignments; holds frequent development discussions; is aware of each person's career goals; constructs compelling development plans and executes them; pushes people to accept developmental moves; will take on those who need help and further development; cooperates with the developmental system in the organization; is a people builder.
• Building Effective Teams : Blends people into teams when needed; creates strong morale and spirit in theirteam; 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.

Kate Spade is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer and we pride ourselves on hiring and developing the best people. All employment decisions (including recruitment, hiring, promotion, compensation, transfer, training, discipline and termination) are based on the applicant's or employee's qualifications as they relate to the requirements of the position under the consideration. These decisions are made without regard to age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic characteristics, race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity, national origin, alienage, citizenship, disability, marital status, military status, pregnancy, or any other legally-recognized protected basis prohibited by applicable law. Visit Kate Spade at www.katespade.com .