Triple Wimbledon champion Fred Perry founded his brand in 1952. He was the son of a cotton spinner who played and fought his way through, always with style and despite the establishment. Today, Fred Perry is a global community of over 370 employees, all inspired by the Laurel Wreath and what it represents.

PURPOSE:

Use knowledge of product, brand, and commercial awareness to ensure that the Fred Perry retail stores and e-commerce channels have the most compelling product offers throughout the year.

To be the conduit between product, design, social commerce, brand, merchandise, and retail operations, ensuring all are aligned to deliver strong sales and a compelling brand message in every Fred Perry store globally.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Retail & Ecommerce

• Inform and influence range plans based on retail first requirements, taking into consideration performance, trend, and growth global market requirements. Plan and devise a range plan or calendar with a focus on monthly drops.
• Work closely with the Retail & Ecommerce Merchandising team to support the strategy for the retail business with regards to category mix, product lifespan, and buy quantities.
• Alongside the B&M Manager, to support and influence the global retail distribution partner merchandising team, to inform and assist on the shaping of store selections, product phasing, and key product opportunities.
• Build strong working relationships with key markets, distributors, and key accounts, and communicate market feedback, performance, and best sellers internally.
• Work with the Merchandising, Brand, and Social Commerce team to ensure trading opportunities are optimised and future risks identified. As part of this, attend the weekly trade meeting.
• Be reactive to learnings from marketing activity (email, product launches, campaigns) to support future activity.
• To communicate the strategy behind the retail buy to the retail store teams, take an active role in the quarterly store manager meetings.
• To be the key product point of contact for our retail managers, presenting the collections to both owned and operated stakeholders and our global retail partners.
• Plan regular store visits, building strong working relationships with regional and store managers.
• To have a close understanding of our customers’ behaviours and our commercial requirements. Understand that these differ between online and physical channels and the regional variances across global markets, and that this understanding is across both our own retail regions and those of our key retail partners.
• Maintain a strong awareness of other brands and businesses behaviour in how they connect with their customers through both the store and online experience.
• Regularly visit and be aware of competition and key customer stores to maintain strong on-the-ground knowledge of how our product is being experienced.
• Plan the retail offer at the style level, balancing the needs of each selling period. Work with the merchandising team to determine which styles to place commercial volume behind.
• To work with the merchandising team to devise a seasonal outlet stock package using product and trend knowledge to formulate SMU programmes.
• To provide key messages and learnings for the quarterly sales reports with the merchandising team, with the understanding that the date is a significant steer for the range plan thinking.

Product/ Design

• To be involved in the design and development process from start to finish, so as to understand the design direction and the key stories or styles that the business needs to focus on.
• Deliver market, competitor, and customer awareness and research back to the product and design team to aid and inform the range-building and design processes.
• Continuously feedback product performance, category, colour, design, price, and attributes of the best and worst sellers to influence the design, shape of the range, and price architecture.
• To inform the range plans at the earliest stage. This requires a solid knowledge of the brand’s global retail sales along with a strong awareness of market trends. The range plan document forms the starting point of the product team’s range planning.
• To present information in a compelling and engaging way, giving clear performance direction and lessons learned.
• To work closely with design on a regular basis to get feedback on performance and insight, e.g., category mixes, phasing, colour level, and price point.

Marketing

Ensure marketing activity is in line with the product strategy:

• Work with brand and visual teams to deliver design direction to the end consumer.
• Handover the product phasing timeline to marketing teams and assist in building the marketing calendar in line with the retail launches.
• Work with the design team, product managers, and brand reporters to develop strong and meaningful stories around the collections that reflect the design direction and brand journey.
• Alongside the Retail Buying & Merchandising Manager, to work closely with the Head of Creative and Head of Brand to ensure the delivery of the initial design direction through to the final consumer. Supporting the annual calendar for brand direction and communication and ensuring it is delivered clearly to our wholesale and retail partners and onto our shop floors and websites.
• To support the Head of Brand at our marketing asset shoots to ensure we are covering global commercial considerations.
• Ensure the social commerce marketing calendar is commercially sound and follows the design direction, and build product edits that deliver brand messages along with sales revenue.
• Work with the Visual Merchandising team to devise seasonal VM guidelines for all our global stores. To present at the retail sign-off meetings and to partners at our global exhibition.

THE PERSON:

• Product knowledge is essential.
• Excel knowledge is required.
• Strong customer, market, and brand awareness and understanding of the impact on our business
• Numerate with strong analytical and computer literacy
• Advanced Excel knowledge is essential.
• A passionate and motivating presenter of both products and ideas
• Ability to build and maintain relationships with other internal and external teams and functions
• An eye for detail, with the ability to think about the bigger picture, makes commercial decisions to benefit the brand.
• Professional with excellent communication skills
• Good awareness of trends and commerciality. Ability to be able to interpret these through a brand lens.
• Ability to digest information and present it back using visual tools (PowerPoint, Keynote, etc.).
• Clear presentation skills for both internal and external stakeholders.

HOURS:

We actively encourage our teams to have a good work-life balance, and so we are pleased to offer flexible working shifts at Fred Perry HQ. Our core shift hours are from 10 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., so employees can choose to start and finish early or start and finish late. (i.e. work 8:00am-4:30pm, or 10:00am-6:30pm etc). We also have a 30-minute early finish on Fridays.

As we continue to work in a more flexible way, the head office acts as a brand hub, where we can all connect and collaborate with one another. This role is a mix of office-based (London) and remote working. We will expect the employee to come into the office regularly for face-to-face meetings and to work alongside their team on collaborative projects.

BENEFITS:

We are proud to offer a wide range of benefits to all our staff and continue to reassess what our community needs from us to thrive. We don’t want to be a good company to work for; we want to be a great one. Here are some things we currently offer:

• Annual performance-related bonus
• Competitive salary, reviewed every year
• Generous staff discounts and regular sample sales
• A generous pension scheme with an 8.5% company contribution
• Option to buy an extra 5-day holiday annually
• Enhanced maternity and paternity packages
• Life insurance
• Private healthcare
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Early finish Fridays
• Season ticket loan
• 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays
• Annual birthday vouchers
• Regular opportunities to attend gigs or events

We actively welcome applications from people of all different backgrounds. Your CV will be submitted to hiring managers with all personal details hidden to ensure anonymity.