Head - Retail | Consumer & Lifestyle | Pan-India Retail Expansion

Experience: 12 - 15 Years

Location: Mumbai

Function: Retail / Sales / Business Leadership

About the Opportunity:

A rapidly growing, professionally managed consumer lifestyle business is entering an aggressive next phase of expansion and is looking to appoint a Head - Retail to lead and build its pan-India retail business.

The organisation has established a strong consumer franchise and is now looking to significantly scale its physical retail footprint over the coming years.

This is a high-ownership, business-building leadership role for an entrepreneurial retail leader who can move beyond managing an existing network and build a scalable, profitable and best-in-class retail platform.

The Role:

The Head - Retail will be responsible for developing and executing the overall retail growth strategy, with ownership across:

- Develop the Pan-India retail expansion strategy and roadmap.

- Lead aggressive expansion of the company's exclusive retail network across metros, Tier 1, Tier 2 and emerging markets.

- Define the optimal COCO / FOFO / franchise-led retail model based on market potential and store economics.

- Identify priority markets, cities, catchments and locations for expansion.

- Own store-level P&L, productivity, profitability and return on investment.

- Drive new-store development from location identification through launch and stabilisation.

- Improve productivity and profitability of the existing store network.

- Develop and institutionalise store economics, KPIs, productivity benchmarks and performance dashboards.

- Build a differentiated customer experience and best-in-class retail execution.

- Partner closely with Brand, Marketing, E-commerce, Supply Chain, Finance and Sales teams to build an integrated omnichannel consumer proposition.

- Develop and lead a high-performance retail organisation capable of supporting rapid expansion.

- Build strong relationships with franchise partners, landlords, developers and other strategic retail stakeholders.

- Establish scalable systems, processes and governance to support a significantly larger retail network.

- Provide regular business reviews and growth plans to the senior leadership/promoter group.

What Are We Looking For?:

We are looking for a business-oriented retail leader, not merely a retail operations professional.

The ideal candidate would bring:

- 12 - 15 years of relevant experience in retail, consumer, lifestyle, apparel, footwear, accessories, consumer electronics or other high-growth consumer businesses.

- Experience managing and scaling large physical retail networks / EBOs.

- Strong exposure to COCO, FOFO and/or franchise-led retail models.

- Demonstrated experience in new-store expansion and market development.

- Strong understanding of store economics, P&L, productivity and profitability.

- Ability to operate across strategy as well as hands-on execution.

- Strong commercial orientation with an entrepreneurial and ownership mindset.

- Experience working in fast-paced, high-growth organisations.

- Strong leadership capability and experience building teams.

- Ability to influence senior stakeholders and work closely with promoters/business leadership.

- MBA / PGDM from a reputed B-school preferred.

- Candidates from IIMs / ISB / XLRI / FMS / SPJIMR / MDI / other leading B-schools would be preferred.

What Makes This Role Different?:

This is an opportunity to build, not merely manage, a retail business.

The mandate involves significant expansion of the existing network and requires a leader who can create the strategy, operating model, organisation and economics required to build a large national retail platform.