ABOUT THE ROLE
Lead the global vision and standards for LOJEL’s retail experience, ensuring every location delivers a consistent, premium brand expression and exceptional in-store customer journey. This role defines the end-to-end store experience framework, visual merchandising guidelines, and team capability programs, and partners closely with Regional GMs, who own commercial performance, sales targets, and P&L accountability for their markets. The Retail Experience Manager enables conversion, loyalty, and operational excellence through best-practice playbooks, training, and experience audits, while Regional GMs drive commercial execution and results.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Retail Experience Strategy & Brand Consistency
- Define and evolve LOJEL’s global retail experience principles across owned stores, shop-in-shops, pop-ups, and distributor-managed locations.
- Translate brand narratives, product stories, and campaign moments into consistent, locally relevant in-store experiences.
- Serve as the gatekeeper of brand consistency across all physical retail environments and partner sites.
Store Performance & Optimization
- Partner with Regional GMs to audit, benchmark, and uplift store performance (conversion, dwell time, basket size, customer engagement).
- Identify underperforming locations and lead turnaround plans through experience redesign, training interventions, and VM refreshes.
- Establish KPIs and measurement frameworks (mystery shopping, client feedback, sales linkage) to track experience impact.
Visual Merchandising & Store Projects Oversight
- Direct the Store Projects & VM Manager to deliver seasonal VM guidelines, planograms, window concepts, and fixture innovations that elevate shoppability, storytelling, and overall brand equity.
- Oversee and execute rollout of permanent and temporary retail environments (flagships, pop-ups, renovations) from concept to installation, ensuring quality, innovation, and on-time delivery.
- Collaborate with Account Management to align regional designers and contractors with LOJEL’s design standards, materials, and sustainability principles.
Retail Training & Capability Building
- Guide the Retail Training Manager to build a global training framework covering brand storytelling, product knowledge, selling, and hospitality standards.
- Ensure training aligns with product launches, campaigns, and retail priorities: roll out digital and in-person formats for scalability.
- Develop tools to monitor and improve in-store performance (e.g., coaching playbooks, feedback loops, etc.).
Cross-Functional & Distributor Collaboration
- Work closely with Marketing, Product, and Digital to embed retail experience into go-to-market plans for product drops and campaigns.
- Partner with Account Management to ensure distributor-operated stores meet LOJEL’s experience and VM standards: provide guidelines, audits, and support.
- Manage external vendors and agency partners for creative development, production, and installation excellence.
Budget & Governance
- Own the retail experience budget (VM production, training programs, store projects): optimize spend for ROI and brand impact.
- Maintain governance on brand guidelines, compliance, and sustainability across all retail touch-points.
WHAT YOU BRING
- 8+ years in retail experience, visual merchandising, or brand experience roles within premium/lifestyle brands, global exposure required.
- Proven track record leading teams (VM, training, or retail excellence) and influencing senior stakeholders (GMs, CEOs, distributors etc.).
- Deep expertise in customer journey mapping, VM strategy and optimization, store design, and training program development.
- Strong project management skills with ability to manage multiple rollouts across time zones and formats.
- Proficiency in Sketchup, AutoCAD, Adobe Creative Suite, MS Office, Google suite, project management tools. Familiarity with 3D visualization tools is a plus.
- Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills: fluent in English (Cantonese/Mandarin preferred for HK base).
SUCCESS METRICS
- Brand consistency scores across audits and mystery shopping.
- On-time, on-budget delivery of VM and store projects.
- Distributor compliance with LOJEL experience and VM standards.
- Training completion rates and post-training performance uplift.
- Improvement in store-level KPIs (conversion rate, average transaction value, dwell time) together with Regional GMs.