Under new ownership, our client has recently been through some restructuring to position themselves to grow the business. This Design Manager position will play a key role as the brand drives new concepts and innovation over the coming seasons to realise this growth.
- Location: London
- Salary: Strong salary & package on offer
The Role
- Deliver creative and industry-leading product design.
- Bringing to market innovative, premium, technical and lifestyle products that drive sales to meet pre-determined commercial goals.
- Lead the design process for all designated product lines to meet agreed sales volume and margin targets.
- Drive close partnerships with Product Development teams to ensure commercial pricing of the collection whilst meeting agreed mark up and margin goals.
- Comprehensive trend research, keeping up-to-date with emerging technical and fashion trends as well as general trends relating to fabrics, colours and shapes.
- Competitor analysis; ensuring differentiation from and driving our client as the lead brand.
- Responsible for the high-quality execution of designs, working with the Global Brand Director to give input on line and product direction.
- Execution of individual designs and collections appropriate to product and design brief. Creation of high quality design packages during design process.
- Development and construction of product, supervising the product creation including fitting, detailing and adaptations.
- Designing product through construction and fabrication decisions in order to deliver expected achieved margins.
The Candidate
- Proven experience in a product design role, ideally in the outdoor apparel industry.
- Proven track record of delivering commercially successful collections, ideally to the outdoor apparel market.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to present concepts in a persuasive manner.
- Strong understanding of designing for market, trend, and end uses; evaluating those attempts.
- Advanced knowledge of current fabric technologies and trends.
- Exceptional CAD and illustration skills to creating and visualise ideas.
- Strong knowledge and understanding of apparel construction
- Strong knowledge of product cycles.