Position Purpose
Retail design innovator and merchandising leader to deliver a digitally connected brand experience across the Sleep Number’s 605+ store portfolio.
This role will lead store design to attract, engage and educate the consumer to drive consideration and conversion.
Through visual communication and digital experiences, overtly position the Sleep Number brand as the leader in Sleep Health by shifting the way people think about and experience Health & Wellness.
This organizational savvy leader will partner across the enterprise (Ecommerce, Operations, IT, Product & Marketing) and is adept at managing complexity and comfortable with ambiguity.
The ideal candidate is a critical thinker, skilled at combining the art and science of store design, interactive technology and leveraging consumer trends and insights.
Critical to this role is staying current with retail trends and experiences, developing competent base knowledge of retail categories and customer behaviors, and being a passionate advocate for great design in the store environment.
Primary Responsibilities
* Store Design: Lead cutting edge future retail concept design/experience that build brand differentiation.
Elevate the Sleep Number brand as the leader in Sleep Health across the retail portfolio through brand refreshes, retrofits and remodels.
Leverage trends, consumer insights, product innovation strategy and customer journey mapping to develop the next generation Sleep Number experience.
* Critical thinking and problem solving to drive innovation, drive concept experimentation and quick learnings to accelerate pacing and scale.
* World-class brand experience that drives ROI/ROIC goals and aligns to market development real and estate objectives.
* Champion sustainability through eco conscious design and materials in support of Sleep Number’s ESG objectives.
* Connected Digital Experience: Immersive experiences that bring to life the benefits of the add value to the product experience/shopping journey and differentiate from the competition.
Scalable and repeatable “Wow” experiences to drive consideration and conversion across all sales & service touchpoints (with or without physical product).
* Assess current experiences and benchmark with competitive and retail leading experiences and build capability roadmap.
* Drives end-user engagement through delivery of a high-quality experience and proper pacing and sequencing of capability advancements to ensure adoption.
* Build and develop business cases, goals, and secures resources, of all initiatives and aligns with stakeholders to advance from concept to full launch.
* Partner with IT to ensure all experiences are connected for seamless reporting and analysis of usage, effectiveness, and performance.
* Research innovative technology and disruptive capabilities.
* Collaborates with leaders and partners in Marketing, IT, Product, Finance, Sales and Operations to ensure alignment with strategic plans, product roadmaps, and operational support.
* Establishes clear accountability and transition hand-offs with partners such as IT, training, change management, end users, managers, and sales leadership to ensure high quality solution design that includes user experience, technical and system architecture, and support and maintenance.
* Communicates progress against plan, results against goal, and celebrates team success at critical milestones across the broader sales and services organization.
* Develop strong project managers, analysts, and product owners to advance the talent and resources within the team.
* Visual Merchandising: Deliver innovative merchandising strategies to attract, engage and educate the consumer across product categories that clearly communicate product differentiation and compliment the digital experience.
* Drive VM standards to ensure store implementation, and act as the definitive guide on the store’s overall visual merchandising approach.
* Merchandising and signage programs that clearly communicates product benefits and simplify the purchase process, individualized by store format and design for all new and existing stores.
* Streamline communication and create efficiencies with all key partners internally and externally to ensure visual merchandising standards are consistently implemented across the portfolio.
Provide sales team with tools for both execution and inspection.
* Evaluate monthly post-mortems and metric reviews of visual programs.
Pro-actively identify opportunities for improvement and develop implementations plans.
Position Requirements
* Minimum of 10 years’ experience in design, store planning, visual merchandising, architecture and or industrial design within the premium retail (fashion, tech and home).
Design development all aspects of retail environments.
* Bachelor’s degree in Architecture, Interior Design, and or Industrial Design, or higher equivalent experience.
* 10 years of experience in progressive professional level leadership roles; experience in team and individual management, with a proven track record of mentoring, coaching and administration.
* Team: Directs, manages, and prioritizes work of internal visual merchandising, store design teams and external resources against agreed priorities.
* Cross-functional: Facilitate change leadership that is required in a fast-moving, high-growth brand.
Build constructive and effective relationships with key business partners including Marketing + Planning, Product, Real Estate, Operations & IT to align strategy, resources and execution.
Partner with store teams for feedback and insights, while having a strong focus on the customer.
Highly accountable and proactively seeks creative solutions to overcome obstacles and improve processes.
Confident in guiding the work and in presenting to sell concepts to partners across the organization.
In this position and ultimately champion the retail experience while supporting Sleep Number’s strategies, goals, and objectives.
* Computer skills: Microsoft office.
Helpful: Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch Up and or other rendering software.
* Innovative tech centric mindset: Helpful (working knowledge of AR/VR)
* Demonstrated financial acumen & budget management.
* Interpersonal skills to influence across departments in a matrixed organization.
* Strong presentation & communication skills
* Ability to articulate creative direction, as well as receive creative feedback.
* Excellent organizational, project management and problem-solving skills.
Sleep Number is an equal opportunity employer.
We are committed to recruiting, hiring and promoting qualified people and prohibit discrimination based on race, color, marital status, religion, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, pregnancy, childbirth, and medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth), sexual orientation, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, genetic information (including testing and characteristics), veteran status, uniformed servicemember status or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law.