North America Footwear Merchandising Director, MarketplaceNikeBeaverton, Oregon
Moved from Basketball to Finish Line, to City Specialty and boutiques, to Hibbett and Shoe Palace inside one fiscal year, and left a door segmentation or a three-year merchandising strategy behind in each seat.
Brand · 2015 to 2016
| Project type | Marketplace and wholesale merchandising |
|---|---|
| Industry | Athletic footwear |
| Seat | Marketplace Merchandising Director |
| Ran through | Nike |
| Dates | September 2015 to September 2016 |
| Accounts | Finish Line, City Specialty and boutiques, WSS, Hibbett Sports, Shoe Palace |
What it is
Nike split merchandising into category merchandising and a new marketplace function. The channel received one Best and Better catalog no matter what a retailer stood for.
His own word for the year was evolution. "Over the course of 9 months, I have had 4 significant role and account base changes."
What Jimmy did
- Finish Line, second quarter: the first door segmentation with planning, a three-year merchandising strategy, and a store teardown in Indianapolis.
- City Specialty and boutiques, third quarter: the City Specialty Assortment Rollout Strategy, 11 versions in five weeks, sorting accounts into six groups with a season-by-season handover from catalogs to built assortments.
- Hibbett and Shoe Palace, fourth quarter: the door cluster framework, built on the retailer's own three consumer profiles, with a muse door for each cluster.
- Took Nike's Create the Future merchandising reorganization to each account, rewriting the internal deck in the retailer's language.
- Led the marketplace merchandising session at the city specialty summit in Las Vegas, February 2016.
- Grew from one direct report to four, and wrote the job profiles for the merchants he hired.
- Raised productivity and profitability 35% across three key retail partners.
- Sped up the new functional process so that product landed 10 days before launch.
- Told Hibbett, "You are three different companies," Fashion, Athletic and Sport, and built a cluster for each.
- Held that the work was about getting a retailer to a more informed starting point, not dictating what to buy.
Results
- The City Specialty strategy and the Door Cluster Framework are both recorded as completed in his review.