Senior Director Of Business Development

Our client is a go-to source for retailers and brands in the knitwear industry. With product specialists who create beautiful trend-driven knitwear, they utilize their extensive knowledge of yarn and experienced technical and manufacturing know-how, leveraging their market intelligence and competitive sourcing capabilities to work for their long-term customers and relationships. With speed and innovation leading the way they work, they use the latest in digital technology and work processes to constantly redefine the knitwear industry. This is an opportunity for a business savvy leader to actively connect and engage in the overall operations of the company and to make a significant contribution to the betterment of the organization. The Director of Business Management & Marketing is expected to ensure the overall effectiveness and growth of the company’s existing customer base and expand the company’s sales through new customers and leveraging innovation pipelines. This critical leadership and liaison position will be a key partner to leadership team, contributing to the strategic vision and guiding the business while playing a key role in driving performance and operationalizing the articulated vision. Responsible for managing and leading relationships with the designated customers, the role includes Operations, Sales, Marketing, and a creative eye. Day-to-day communication with the company's Hong Kong office to ensure that the correct information is received on time and presented in the correct way to each brand’s buyer. The successful candidate is both strategic and tactical, serving as a commercial and business thought partner across various functional aspects of the business while implementing the systems, processes, and people to help a company continuously get to the next level. While further developing the established business management team, will personally participate in the development and execution of the customer commercialization strategy, calling on key and high potential customers as necessary. This will require travel 1-2 times seasonally domestically to Store Headquarters for meetings and partnership and annually to Asia for development and/or corporate meetings.

• The salary range is 175-190,000 based on experience.
• This role is based in NYC with a Hybrid 3 days in office / 2 WFH schedule.

Responsibilities:

• Originate, execute, and manage business development opportunities that drive revenue growth
• Develop and implement the company sales strategy across key customers and potential new customers to ensure that the company identifies and optimizes a clear path to aggressive growth
• Collaborate closely with the merch and design teams to ensure alignment between requirements, capabilities, and NPD decisions
• Be responsible for the full cycle of sales and business from a planning, execution, management, and control perspective through to 3PL / warehouse and customer DCs along with a focus on solutions selling
• Manage the ideation, design, development, and implementation of new products while identifying opportunities to test proven and new methods, anticipating barriers to adoption and creating a cost-effective roadmap to bring the products / methods to the customer base and the market
• Create solutions to address customers' needs and wants, often with little to no precedent, requiring comprehensive and original concepts and approaches
• Assess resource capacity and anticipate future needs to drive product innovation and execute product improvement and productivity initiatives in close collaboration with the cross-functional teams and upper management
• Lead development of the company marketing strategy with an emphasis on achieving market penetration and sales growth with particular attention on cost-effective customer acquisition and market demand generation
• Partner with the Asia Innovation, Merch, and Trend / Design teams as well as external customers to fuel innovation and NPD as a revenue generator
• Further develop a team dedicated to growth and contribution generation, ensuring superior customer service objectives are met and go to market strategies are defined and followed for both short- and long-term
• Ensure systems and procedures necessary for the smooth operation of the department
• Develop long-term plans and budgets for the department and its activities, monitor progress, ensure adherence, and evaluate performance
• Be accountable for account management and customer interface, making sure that all functions of the organization are aligned to meet its strategic commercial objectives
• Maintain a climate that attracts, retains, and motivates top quality personnel; recruit, train, appraise, supervise, support, develop, promote, and guide qualified personnel
• Serve as the face of the business to the customer and marketplace, overseeing the company's product and service offerings, making sure all functions of the organization are aligned to meet the strategic commercial objectives
• Develop comprehensive customer segmentation strategy and provide leadership for enterprise-wide business development opportunities
• Deliver strategic leadership for defining the commercial path to sales growth, profitability, and infrastructure of the company with teams across the globe including Hong Kong and Bangladesh
• Form and execute long- and short-term strategies and plans for business unit; this includes formulation of detailed executable plans taking into account competitive data, sell-through data, market data, customer knowledge, and anniversary opportunities and applying them into a holistic customer strategy
• Build, manage, and develop sales team through robust people development and performance accountability
• Engage existing and prospective customers in ways that foster a deep understanding of where to align along with their pain points and leverage that knowledge through developing product roadmaps / line plans, and innovative solutions
• Develop collaborative working relationships throughout the manufacturing organization in pursuit of the of the company's overall business goals, uniting company capabilities with the needs and wants of customers
• Control the achievement of KPIs and business growth
• Be responsible for B2B Marketing, Industry Engagements, and Social Marketing
• Manage sales pipeline to ensure accurate and adequate lead inflow to reach targeted sales objectives
• Cultivate a culture of focused hard work, collaboration, accountability, and results

Qualifications:

• A passion for fashion, a keen aesthetic, and a desire to learn about sweater construction
• Experience managing diverse and geographically remote teams
• Agility: Ability to deal with shifting priorities and issues inherent to a fast-growing private organization
• Experience of working in a "performance based" environment and fostering it within the team
• Interpersonal Communications: Demonstrated skills in both written and oral presentations
• Capacity to conceptualize as well as operationalize commercial strategies
• Experience in dealing with issues on an international basis: understanding of the North American and international landscape
• Well-developed Microsoft Office skills
• Working Under Pressure: Ability to deliver against set objectives while operating on some occasions in stressful situations
• At least 10 years of experience in an overall commercial / business function having held key roles in recognized innovative organizations
• Strong creative, strategic, analytical, organizational, and personal negotiation skills
• Significant travel to US customers on at least quarterly basis along with annual travel to Hong Kong / China / Bangladesh
• People Management: Ability to build, manage and develop high performance sales organization – nurturing joy and meaning in the work overall
• Experience in the fashion industry / private label / contract manufacturing – Management, Sourcing, Buying or combination of all
• Technical Aptitude: Ability to comprehend complex technical topics and specialized information regarding knitwear
• Demonstrated skills, knowledge, and experience in the design and execution of business plans and strategies

If you meet the required qualifications and are interested in this role, please apply today.

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