Chief Operating Officer

We are looking for an organised leader with experience of wholesale, retail, manufacturing, warehousing & supply chain within the fashion sector. Sector experience is essential for this role.

You will be a major contributor to driving increased operational efficiencies within the business while contributing to the development, implementation, monitoring and review of the business strategy and plans as a member of the Executive leadership team.

Day to day, you will use a hands-on approach to providing operational leadership to the business and its senior management team with a particular emphasis on driving efficiency improvements across systems and processes and bringing together different departments to build one cohesive team. Over time the objective of the role is to implement industry and cross industry best practice to help the business to achieve top quartile operational performance.

Experienced in process mapping, process improvement analysis, experience managing and developing business system architecture across ERP & WMS a must but PLM & MRP a bonus. This is a newly created role, looking for an individual who will seize the opportunity to create their own mark on the business via effective change management.

The Role:

• Responsible for operations across the company, managing and tracking the day to day operations of a fully vertically integrated fashion business
• Design, collate and present operational daily, weekly and monthly KPI Reports from across the business operations to the executive leadership team
• Lead the assessment and improve of existing processes and select systems solutions to drive cross business efficiencies between remote operational and central group functions
• Work with the Group Finance manager to coordinate the key assumptions and data inputs into the short-term budgets and financial forecasts and to monitor daily weekly and monthly operational performance and devise and implement operational change to deliver desired business outcomes
• Work closely as a member of the Executive leadership team to contribute to Group strategy and business planning and execution and the monitoring of performance against plan.
• Together with the Managing Director and the Group HR function, ensure the senior departmental leaders are supported and developed.
• Support the Managing Director in the review of the sales channel performance with a close attention to the key performance targets of sales, margin and stock sell through.

The Person:

• Needs senior operations experience of a successful fashion business with proven effective results and a deep understanding of the operational interdependencies from design to garment sale.
• Strong collaborative working style as part of a leadership team to develop and manage people. Must possess strong leadership skills with a keen understanding of their own style and how to flex this style to both support, motivate and inspire operational teams and also influence and contribute to effective executive team decision making
• Personal qualities of integrity, confidence, focus and the ability to work under pressure
• Demonstrable experience in developing, implementing and monitoring key operational performance metrics across a vertically integrated business
• Track record of analysing business processes and implementing business wide systems solutions
• Strong analytical focus, excellent organizational skills and reporting (written and verbal) with ability to manage deliveries to strict deadlines
• Luxury/Contemporary Fashion experience is highly desired
• Experience & established network within the European luxury/contemporary fashion market preferred

Please enclose a covering letter to your application.