About the Role:

As the Brand Lead, you will act as the commercial, creative, and strategic custodian of the portfolios market success and further scale owned brands into a profitable omnichannel brand. This leadership role demands an agile strategist who can optimize brand performance across shifting retail architectures. You will hold end-to-end accountability for the portfolios P&L (Top Line and Bottom Line), driving growth across the entire apparel value chain. The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in architecting and operationalizing both PPMP (Pure Play Marketplace) and OR (Outright Purchase) models, and optimizing inventory to maximize profit margins and speed-to-market.

Roles and responsibilities:

1. Brand Strategy, Product Innovation & Portfolio Development:

- Vision & Execution: Define and execute the long-term brand strategy and positioning for Fashion owned brands ensuring distinct consumer identities for each sub-brand.

- Product Innovation: Lead design and product development teams to foster continuous product innovation, ensuring collections consistently deliver high-quality consumer experiences across digital and physical touchpoints.

- Data-Led Merchandising: Leverage consumer data and analytics to shape category depth, optimize buying structures and predicting trend cycles.

2. Commercial Model Architecture & Channel Strategy:

- PPMP & OR Model Ownership: Manage and optimize the commercial transition and balance between OR (Outright Purchase) and PPMP (Marketplace) models to maximize capital efficiency and brand profitability.

- Liability & Inventory Optimization: Oversee the liquidation or conversion of pending raw material/production liabilities into high-turn inventory during strategic commercial pivots.

- Omnichannel & General Trade (GT) Expansion: Lead the expansion of the General Trade network and physical storefronts, ensuring seamless inventory.

3. Financial Leadership and Margin Governance:

- P&L and Profitability Ownership: Manage the complete financial health (Top Line and Bottom Line) of the multi-category portfolio, ensuring sustainable, profitable growth.

- Intake Margin Optimization: Secure high intake margins across sub-brands by negotiating cost architectures, defining agile pricing structures, and establishing strict markdown guardrails.

4. Collection Lifecycle & Season Launches:

- End-to-End Go-To-Market (GTM): Direct the critical path for Season Launches, ensuring timely coordination between design validation, sourcing readiness, cataloguing, and marketing deployment.

- Portfolio Diversification: Tailor distinctive positioning matrices for sub-brands: functional comfort for Indian wear and Western wear brands.

- Data-Driven Merchandising: Leverage consumer insights, past sell-through trends, and competitive analysis to shape buying depth, width, and replenishment models.

5. Cross-Functional Synergy:

- Partner closely with Sourcing and Supply Chain nodes to balance inventory lead times and minimize working capital bottlenecks.

- Align with Performance and Brand Marketing teams to execute targeted campaigns that build brand equity while driving immediate conversion.

Ideal candidate should have:

- Experience: 12-15 years of robust brand management or category leadership experience within Tier-1 Apparel, Lingerie, or Lifestyle D2C/Retail organizations.

- P&L Expertise: Proven history of managing scale (multi-crore portfolios) with demonstrable success in improving gross margins and net profitability.

- GT Knowledge: Deep operational familiarity with Indian General Trade and wholesale distribution structures, payment cycles, and channel logistics.

- Education: MBA or post-graduate degree from a premier business school.