BRICK EXECUTIVE SEARCH has been exclusively retained to recruit for a Chief Merchandising Officer for a high growth fashion retailer. Overview: The CMO is responsible for leading product and brand strategy to drive growth across apparel, footwear, and accessories. This role involves developing trend-driven, market-ready product assortments that align with brand identity. The CMO will manage a team, collaborate cross-functionally with design, planning, retail operations and marketing, and ensure cohesive execution of business strategies. They will also oversee financial plans and sales forecasts, analyze market trends, and act as a brand ambassador to ensure the brand’s success and alignment with customer expectations. The CMO will report directly to the partners of the business. Essential Functions: Category Strategy: • Develop and implement a comprehensive merchandising strategy that drives sales, profitability, and market share growth. • Align merchandising initiatives with the overall business goals and brand vision, curating a diverse and compelling product assortment that reflects current trends and customer preferences. • Lead merchandising teams in identifying current and future trends along with potential white space opportunities to create a unique offering for the consumer. • Lead development of global line plan, assortment mix and strategy for Category. Partner with Design, PDC, Sales/Planning, Operations and other Merchandising VPs to ensure strategies are clearly communicated throughout the organization. • Influence others and gain alignment on strategies to drive business, style and innovation forward • Lead business and creative decisions for final assortment and act as the key liaison with cross functional partners on assortment, visual and pricing strategies • Work closely with design and planning teams to ensure cohesive product development and inventory management. • Optimize merchandise assortment across store and e-commerce channels, supporting key growth initiatives and capabilities that evolve or grow the business within the channel, across channels, and/or across the brand. Brand Strategy: • Lead product strategy development including driving milestone meetings and executing product development calendar. • Develop a balanced product assortment with a strong price-value relationship to achieve consistency within all business classifications. • Conduct market research and analysis to identify emerging trends, opportunities, and competitive threats. • Utilize data-driven insights and establish KPIs to inform merchandising decisions and strategies. Analyze sales data and customer feedback to continuously improve the product offering and enhance the customer experience. Financial Objectives: • Drive achievement of margin, sales goals based on financial plans for all channels • Develop Long Range Plans with cross functional teams and Leadership Team • Maintain awareness of competition relative to product value relationship and customer profitability within the category. • Lead the team to analyze sales, competitive and market trends, and customer behavior to establish or update overall product assortment strategies. • Clearly communicate business, margin, markdown, and inventory opportunities to cross-functional teams and leadership. Qualifications: • 10+ years of successful experience in retail buying or merchandising with at least 5+ years in a leadership role within an omnichannel retail environment • Proven experience leading the product development process within a startup or emerging brand • Successful apparel merchandising experience, in multiple channels of distribution • Strong ability to build business strategies and implement shorter-term tactical plans that are cost-effective, efficient and realistic • Proven successful leadership developing high performing talent and teams • Demonstrated ability to problem-solve, develop creative solutions and influence and motivate diverse audiences • Comprehensive understanding of the retail industry, macro and micro market, product and customer trends • Successful experience with large scale apparel brands managing > $100M • Strong interpersonal skills; excellent written and verbal communication including presentation skills • Experience working with a wholesale channel • Must be comfortable with travel ~20%