Business Head - Lifestyle

Experience: 8 - 12 Years

Role Overview:

We are looking for a commercially driven Business Head - Lifestyle to lead the Lifestyle portfolio across products for dogs and cats, including beds, toys, apparel, walking accessories, dining, and travel essentials. The role will be responsible for driving business growth, profitability, assortment performance, and inventory efficiency across retail stores and digital channels.

This position requires end-to-end business ownership, including P&L management, category strategy, merchandise planning, and cross-functional leadership. The ideal candidate will combine strong commercial acumen with customer understanding to build a profitable and scalable product portfolio in collaboration with the Founder and Creative team.

Key Responsibilities:

- Own the Lifestyle portfolio's P&L, driving revenue growth, gross margin improvement, and inventory health.

- Develop annual and seasonal business plans aligned with growth and profitability objectives.

- Define category and assortment strategies, identifying products to scale, refresh, reprice, or discontinue.

- Lead merchandise planning, demand forecasting, replenishment, and inventory allocation.

- Monitor key business metrics, including sell-through, stock turns, inventory ageing, markdowns, and category profitability.

- Establish pricing strategies, target volumes, product launch timelines, and commercial success measures in collaboration with the Creative team.

- Develop channel-specific assortments for retail stores and e-commerce platforms to optimize product availability and sales.

- Conduct regular store visits to assess product performance, customer preferences, and merchandising effectiveness.

- Collaborate with sourcing, supply chain, merchandising, retail, e-commerce, marketing, and finance teams to execute business plans.

- Manage open-to-buy (OTB) planning and inventory investments to balance product availability with working capital efficiency.

- Lead, mentor, and develop the Lifestyle merchandising team to achieve business objectives.

- Identify growth opportunities through category analysis, customer insights, and market trends.

Required Skills and Experience:

- 8 - 12 years of experience in category management, merchandise planning, or business leadership within fashion, lifestyle, home, kids, sporting goods, accessories, or consumer retail.

- Proven experience managing a sizeable product category or portfolio with direct responsibility for revenue, gross margin, and inventory performance.

- Strong expertise in assortment planning, demand forecasting, replenishment, open-to-buy (OTB), and inventory management.

- Experience managing omnichannel businesses across owned retail stores and digital channels.

- Strong commercial and analytical skills, with the ability to translate business data into actionable decisions.

- Experience in pricing strategy, product lifecycle management, and inventory optimization.

- Ability to collaborate effectively with creative teams and influence cross-functional stakeholders.

- Demonstrated leadership skills, including team management and business planning.

Key Competencies:

- P&L ownership and business growth

- Category and assortment strategy

- Merchandise planning and inventory optimization

- Revenue and gross margin management

- Omnichannel retail operations

- Cross-functional collaboration and team leadership

- Customer-centric commercial decision-making