Head of Retail, USA Northeast

Head of Retail, USA Northeast

The Head of Retail - USA Northeast is responsible for developing sales, people, operational strategies, and customer experience for our retail stores in the USA Northeast market. 

You will work closely and collaboratively with the other Heads of Retail (USA South, USA West and Canada), forming a strong and inspirational Retail Leadership team for North America., and creating an environment for empowered shop managers. Lush Retail is a network of independent shops, run by passionate individuals that work for their local customers. They are at the heart of their local community, and surprise people with exciting products and genuine care.

You will also work closely with a Retail Finance Business partner, and through collaboration with the wider Leadership team, ensure that the market exceeds budget and improves profit and KPIs, whilst ensuring all teams are providing exceptional customer experience in line with brand values in a safe environment. This role leads the efforts of your Retailer Team, supporting sales, people, and customer experience for 70+ stores in the United States Northeast market. The Head of Retail plays an essential role in growing and developing talent in our business through collaboration and sharing best practices to develop fierce teams, led by empowered managers. You know how to be curious about opportunities and how to be real with feedback and support. 

 

Ultimately, The Retail team is responsible for:

• Recruiting great managers
• Training and developing the managers
• Making sure the shop staff are well trained in product, brand & service

As well as the talent, you will be responsible for developing your market, primarily focusing on the growth opportunity areas and shops in your market. 

Lush needs people who can adapt and evolve to the needs of our growing business. You will work in collaboration with our business leaders, shop managers, and support teams to align the business focus with putting customers at the heart of our business and supporting the secret master plan. Always keeping Group Retail’s principles at the forefront when building strategies:

• Empowered & Educated Managers
• Accountable Support Teams
• Lead With Trust
• Transparency Of Measurement
• Putting Retail First
• Sharing Knowledge
• Being Agile 
• Diverse And Inclusive Business
• Think Global, Act Local

You hold sacred our Lush culture and values through fearless leadership and owning the experience of every employee in your market, and every customer in our Lush shops. You grow talent by motivating, developing, and coaching your team to their highest potential; you know how to be curious about their opportunities and career ambitions and how to be real with feedback and support. Lush values people who can adapt and evolve to the needs of our business, analyze, and interpret metrics, and translate strategy into behaviors that drive sales and improve profit. Our Lush employees live with purpose, finding their personal value connection with the values of our business, bringing their work and life paths into one holistic journey. #mylushlife 

Your responsibilities will include: 

• In partnership with the Retail Leadership team and the Lush North America senior team, create and implement the retail strategy to build the business, drive company goals, increase sales performance, and improve efficiency and customer experience in shops for your portfolio in the US Northeast market from a customer, staff, sales and costs perspective. With a special focus on market development in specific growth areas/shops located in your market.
• Ensuring your market is recruiting great managers, training and developing the managers, and ensuring the shop teams are well trained in product, brand, and service. 
• Leading by example, developing retailers to be able to understand the behaviors and expectations required when supporting stores, ensuring we are empowering and encouraging managers to run their own shops/businesses.
• Lead, mentor, and develop a results-oriented Retail team. Partnering with the People & Culture team to help hire, onboard, train, and prepare your team to ensure an agile internal pipeline of exceptionally talented leaders in every shop and support team. 
• Responsible for the retail team performance, evaluating and collaborating with People and Culture to identify skill and knowledge gaps and create plans to address them through training, development, and performance management 
• Manage daily retail operations while constantly iterating on strategies, tools, and processes that will create an exceptional internal and external customer experience 
• Oversee all relevant systems and tools, create and refine the operational processes and policies that support our field teams, simplifying systems and communication flow wherever possible. 
• Review and analyze key metrics as they relate to store-based initiatives to determine effectiveness and scalability, test and trial improvements with field feedback 
• Develop and sustain an inclusive process for centralizing, aggregating, and actioning store team feedback through a variety of listening methods 
• Work closely with visual merchandising and the execution and evaluation of visually stunning floor sets, relocations and refits, new shops, and pop-up experiences
• Collaborate cross-functionally on retail initiatives with Brand, Digital, Finance, IT, and Property; ensure participating teams have the retail insight and support to be successful as their decisions impact our shop teams. Provide perspective through the lens of a store leader, ensuring those decisions improve things for our employees, our customers, and our stores. 
• Oversee and improve product and process workflow from manufacturing and distribution to ensure that shops are well stocked with quality products at the right time and partner with planning teams and oversee all inventory management initiatives, including inventory counts, ordering, product launches, seasonal allocations, and discontinued items 
• Manage overall retail and store-level budgets by optimizing store processes to drive profitability levels at each store as well as determining expense reductions when necessary 
• Manage budget as related to team initiatives and travel and review and propose changes as needed to invest in sales outcomes 

 

You bring the following qualifications: 

Required

• 10+ years of retail experience including multi-unit retail and sales leadership 

• Experience running a Lush shop brilliantly 
• Immense respect for shop teams, managers, and what they do best
• Proven success in hiring, training, and developing retail leaders 
• History of successful project launches and program development for retail 
• Ability to identify strengths, delegate, prioritize, and coach
• Positive, solutions-focused mindset with lots of new ideas
• Strong understanding of Lush MAs and business drivers
• Successful working relationships with Lush Managers
• Be able to spot what's working well and replicate it
• Ability to negotiate, challenge, and disagree healthily
• Ability to build strong relationships across the Lush business entities, and desire to learn about them
• Adaptable character able to manage reactively and proactively
• Track record of strategic thinking, goal orientation, and strong communication 
• Ability to assess the impact of system-wide changes, anticipate obstacles, and prepare 
• Ability to travel up to 50% of the time in the US, Canada, and the UK. 
• Located in the USA Northeast market, and near 3+ stores

 

Preferred, but not essential: 

• Business degree or equivalent preferred 
• Strong understanding or experience managing operations, communications, labor, inventory, and/or visual merchandising 
• Experience in cross-cultural collaboration and DEIB or social justice training 
• Fluency in Spanish, French, or other languages

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