District Leader - New England

About the role

Kate Spade New York is a global lifestyle brand known for its colorful, bold, and optimistic aesthetic. As part of the Tapestry portfolio, the brand designs extraordinary products for everyday life, including handbags, ready-to-wear, jewelry, footwear, home décor, and more. The District Leader will oversee 8 Kate Spade stores in a mix of Outlet and Specialty locations within the New England territory, ensuring a consistent modern luxury store experience and collaborating with the buying team to provide customer and market insights. The role requires a strong leadership presence to inspire and motivate teams while upholding the brand’s standards and values.

Responsibilities

• Customer Engagement: Create and reinforce a proactive selling culture focused on long-term relationships through clienteling and customer shopping experiences; foster an environment where service and selling are top priorities through training, coaching, role-modeling, and personal customer involvement.
• Leadership Effectiveness: Develop the team to deliver outstanding customer experiences across the district; manage with integrity, honesty, fairness, and knowledge while promoting the brand’s culture, values, and vision; plan, delegate, and communicate key responsibilities to ensure smooth operations; review store environments and business indicators with the Regional Manager to identify successes, problems, and opportunities; create retention and succession planning strategies; act as a brand ambassador to promote Kate Spade in the marketplace.
• Strategic Focus: Communicate vision, strategy, and clear directions to the team; create innovative strategies to achieve short and long-term goals; collaborate with the Regional Director and cross-functional partners to establish objectives aligned with the company’s vision; make decisions that support company priorities and values.
• Brand and Fashion Awareness: Stay current with market competition, industry trends, and customer shopping behaviors; understand and communicate how Kate Spade products fit into fashion trends; keep up to date on advertising, editorial, PR, and external resources; ensure Kate Spade employees are perceived as fashion advisors by communicating trends and market insights.
• Business Development: Develop and execute strategies to grow the business, including sales, clienteling, customer engagement, talent acquisition, and retention; demonstrate strong business acumen and analytical skills to strategically forecast, plan, and budget; collaborate with business partners (Visual, Merchandising, Planning, HR, LP, Finance, Store Operations) to align strategies with overall business objectives; provide input on customer and competitor trends, assortment planning, and local market relevance; share local competition best practices.

Requirements

• 10+ years of management experience in a similar multi-unit retail environment; a combination of education and experience will be considered.
• 30% travel required for this role.
• Proven ability to create strategies and deliver results.
• Effective communication and collaboration with Kate Spade Senior Leadership.
• Proactive problem-solving skills to assess issues and develop actionable resolutions.
• Ability to think broadly, consider multiple perspectives, and reach logical conclusions that serve the brand.
• Track record of attracting exceptional talent to an organization.

Competencies

• Courage: Provides direct, actionable feedback; addresses people problems quickly and directly; takes necessary negative action when required.
• Creativity: Generates new and unique ideas; makes connections among unrelated concepts; is seen as original and value-added in brainstorming.
• Customer Focus: Dedicated to meeting internal and external customer expectations; uses customer insights to improve products and services; builds effective relationships and gains trust.
• Dealing with Ambiguity: Effectively copes with change; shifts gears comfortably; acts without having the total picture; handles risk and uncertainty well.
• Drive for Results: Consistently exceeds goals; is bottom-line oriented; pushes self and others for results.
• Interpersonal Savity: Relates well to all levels of people; builds rapport and constructive relationships; uses diplomacy and tact; diffuses high-tension situations.
• Learning on the Fly: Learns quickly in new situations; analyzes successes and failures for improvement; experiments to find solutions; enjoys challenges.
• Strategic Agility: Anticipates future trends; has broad knowledge and perspective; creates competitive strategies and plans.
• Developing Direct Reports and Others: Provides challenging tasks; holds frequent development discussions; constructs and executes compelling development plans; pushes people to accept growth opportunities.
• Building Effective Teams: Blends people into teams; creates strong morale; fosters open dialogue; defines success in terms of the whole team.

Kate Spade is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. Employment decisions are based on qualifications without regard to age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic characteristics, race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity, national origin, alienage, citizenship, disability, marital status, military status, pregnancy, or any other legally-recognized protected basis prohibited by applicable law.

Pay

Base Pay Range: $135,000.00 – $145,000.00

Benefits

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• 401(k)
• Paid Paternity and Maternity leave
• Commuter Benefits
• Disability insurance
• Tuition assistance