Senior Director Merchandising

About the role

The Senior Director of Merchandising is responsible for the performance and strategic direction of the North America Jewelry and Accessories categories. Acting as the Vice President's key partner, this role translates the department vision into execution while driving commercial performance and leading transformational initiatives. The Senior Director develops best-in-class merchandising practices and organizational capabilities to support sustainable growth, operational excellence, and a high-performance culture. This role oversees the development of cross-category strategies across all distribution channels and ensures alignment with marketing, wholesale, ecommerce, and training.

The Senior Director serves as the connective leader across Retail, CRM, Visual Merchandising, Client Development, Retail Excellence, and Training to ensure strategies are translated into exceptional client experiences. By aligning commercial priorities with product storytelling and field execution, this role ensures every product launch is delivered with consistency and measurable business impact. The Senior Director must maintain trusted partnerships with Rome Headquarters, fostering collaboration, open communication, and alignment between North American business needs and priorities.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Vice President to establish long-term merchandising priorities, organizational objectives, and strategic roadmaps.
• Anticipate market trends, evolving client behaviors, and competitive dynamics to proactively shape merchandising strategies.
• Partner with Rome Headquarters to influence future product development through analysis of client preferences, product functionality, wearability, competitive trends, and regional market opportunities.
• Guide the evolution of the merchandising functions through innovative approaches that balance global guidelines with regional opportunities.
• Direct execution of product launches, in-store activations, and key retail moments.
• Establish forecasting governance and executive business review processes that ensure planning accuracy.
• Reevaluate all category performance metrics, dashboards, and reporting frameworks to enable executive decision-making.
• Develop structured CRM partnership frameworks to analyze client preferences and purchasing behaviors, translating insights into merchandising commercial opportunities.
• Ensure the balance between Maison image and commercial performance when guiding assortment, inventory investment, and lifecycle decisions for product with merchandising category leaders.
• Partner with Vice President to optimize visual merchandising strategies for both product presentation and commercial success.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement by identifying opportunities to simplify processes, enhance collaboration, and improve execution.
• Establish decision-making frameworks and operating standards that drive consistency, accountability, and execution across the merchandising organization.
• Define performance expectations for merchandising team members, ensuring KPIs are reached in alignment with strategy.
• Lead, mentor, and scale a lean, high-performing merchandising team, setting clear standards for execution, communication, and accountability.
• Resolve issues related to organizational challenges to ensure business continuity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, merchandising, or related field; MBA preferred.
• 12-15+ years of progressive merchandising leadership experience within retail, preferred luxury.
• Demonstrated success leading a multi-category organization and managing managers.
• Strong commercial acumen with expertise in assortment inventory optimization, forecasting, retail analytics, and merchandising strategy.
• Proven success leading organization transformation, business process improvement, and change management initiatives.
• Leadership coaching and talent development capabilities with a track record of building high-performing teams.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to synthesize quantitative findings and influence executive, technical, and creative stakeholders.
• Advanced analytical expertise with Excel, SAP, and Power BI.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and navigate organizational complexity and drive cross-functional alignment.

Pay

Salary Range between $200,000 - $225,000 annually.