Design Lead - Mens Formal Wear

Brand Financials and Profits:

- Present aesthetically appealing collection swatches and value added services to help the sales team achieve the monthly budgets.

- Sell the design concept by presenting the new collection to the MDPs and channel partners at the trade show

- Maintain Gross profit of the products by defining and advising the design team to utilize the raw materials in the most effective manners

Strategic alignment with the business vision:

- Co-Formulate, articulate the vision and mission for the brand along with the Brand Head/ COO.

- Strategize the new initiatives and direct the launch.

- Conduct market studies and trend spotting studies to understand retail and consumers.

- Constantly observe business environment and competition and come up with improvement, innovations

- Develop and monitor means to bring concept to consumer with collaboration, influence and alignment with Marketing Head, Retail Director, VM Head and Buying Head.

As & delivery:

- Control and guide the formulation, articulation and execution of design merchandize strategy in line with brand promise and revisit time to time to check effectiveness.

- Provide levers of innovation and allow team members to come up with breakthrough ideas and products.

- Supervise Brand Designers to make sure that the design team delivers creative seasonal collections and innovative products in-tune with international and domestic benchmarks

- Spot trends and coach team to spot trends

- Develop design leadership and competitive edge over competition.

- Control balanced merchandize offerings aligned with the seasonal merchandize grid and fashion pyramid

Collaborate the season campaign:

- Ensure complete execution of the season campaign and Annual Media Plan in collaboration with the Marketing Head

Design calendar adherence:

- Ensures Adherence to the business process calendar

- Design and range delivers on time with quality- indents, well defined user friendly, tech packs for sample development, samples for trade show

- Ensuring product development process and R&D process controls.

- Enable working relationship with the partners in business.

- Ensure and control the concept to instore. Work and ensure lead designer work with VM and Retail buying teams to bring the design essence at retail touch points.

- Allow teams work as Buddy Teams for operational excellence across brand departments.

Work for Retail Excellence:

- Strategize, lead, and establish the key tenets of Retail Excellence along with Retail Director to get the action plan ready.

Adopt few stores and run the stores to initiate retail excellence through (A) Retail Identity for all sub brands, (B) Store Design, (C) Shop in Shop Design, (D) Merchandise division based on store formats, (E) Developing visual merchandising systems and practices, (F) Staff Grooming & training, (G) Soft Experience etc.,

Drive Brand Aesthetics and B.I. Manual:

Develop Brand Identity Manual. Define, establish norms for brand aesthetics and arrange to conduct session to spread the aesthetic around creative and non-creative functions in corp to reflect the aesthetics at every level.

New Category launch:

Establish core tenets of the category, create strong elements which can give way to product creation and communication. Establish clear USP in positioning and aesthetics. Work towards perfection in launch and its activities

Design Functional Excellence:

- Lead the overall development of the design function from infrastructure to creative intelligence.

- To make design deliverables to meet the highest standards required branded business.

- Tackle the forthcoming market challenges which include fashion forecasting and sharp trend spotting. Work based on the tenets established in FY-12 design focus.

- Based on the ATK functional process SOP, initiate systems and practices which would allow design team to be process oriented effortlessly. Successful PLM implementation

Team Management:

- Customer first- Build, maintain and develop professional work relationship with internal and external customers, team members & support teams.

- Establish relevant consumer panels to facilitate co-creation.

- Lead, guide, coach, motivate, develop design team to create innovative and successful design concepts

- Enhance employee engagement and retain the best talent.

- Implement and monitor Q12 actions.

- Knowledge transfer of international design

- Set KRAs for team members, conduct periodic reviews of performance and provide feedback

- Assess skill gaps, coach team members and ensure adequate training is provided for in line with needs

- Identify non performers in the team and work out performance improvement plan in consultation with HR

Establish reward/ incentive schemes for team members and significantly distinguish top performers from others