VM Manager

Job Title: VM Manager

Location: Woodmead - FO, Johannesburg

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

• Contribute to store profitability by meeting or exceeding sales and KPI targets within the store through flawless visual merchandising.
• Coordinate team members to provide a leading shopping experience.

Key Responsibilities:

• Monitor and analyze performance data and make necessary adjustments to drive commercial success, especially within VM.
• Allocate resources and organize processes within visual merchandising to drive efficiency and productivity in various situations, including maintenance and layout of existing stores, floor plans, in-store communication, reporting, and controlling costs.
• Drive product presentation and best practices within visual merchandising for a meaningful consumer experience, from sell-in to sell-through.
• Be a role model for customer service and meet or exceed customers' expectations.
• Supervise and coordinate the team to ensure all customers receive an optimal service level at all times.
• Lead your team to meet or exceed customer expectations at all times.
• Be a Brand Ambassador, consistently exhibiting the Brand Attitude and Values.
• Use advanced category expertise to drive sales and customer loyalty in your assigned area.
• Lead training for visual merchandising techniques and guidelines to follow marketing concepts and brand campaigns while supporting all team foundational and seasonal brand and product knowledge training.
• Lead and coordinate team members to consistently execute and maintain established visual merchandising and in-store communication standards as per global guidelines and local directives.
• Manage merchandise delivery processing on the same day it arrives.
• Keep an organized stockroom and direct sales floor replenishment to ensure the store's complete product offer is immediately available and easily accessible to customers on a consistent basis.
• Execute all applicable loss prevention procedures.
• Maintain a safe and productive shopping and working environment.
• Support the recruitment, onboarding, training, coaching, and motivation of store team members to maximize their performance.
• Share best practices to drive overall store team performance and market visual merchandising strategy and implementation.
• Support market visual merchandising strategy through coaching and supporting visual merchandising champions.
• Complete all applicable training programs and effectively apply the learning on the job.
• Seek coaching and learning opportunities to continually improve your performance.

Key Relationships:

• Customers
• Peers and Supervisor
• VM back office, Trade Marketing back office, Retail back office

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Ability to use critical thinking and creative ways to solve problems.
• Passion for fashion & sports.
• Organized and detail-oriented.
• Good numeracy, literacy, verbal, and written communication skills.
• A good eye for style, coordination, and attention to detail.
• Ability to make recommendations that effectively resolve problems using judgment consistent with standards, practices, policies, and procedures.
• Strong leadership, interpersonal, and communication skills.
• Strong ability to collaborate and influence across different levels and departments.
• Thrives under ambiguity; open to change and acts as an advocate for the 'new'.
• Open to feedback; able to keep composure in stressful situations.
• Passion for the adidas brand and for sport.
• Proficient with MS applications (Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint) and other computer software (Internet, POS Systems, etc).

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum 3+ years' work experience in a sports/fashion customer- and commercial-focused retail environment with advanced selling experience and comprehensive product, retail, and industry understanding, as well as first supervisor experience.
• Intermediate numeracy and literacy and advanced verbal communication skills.