Brand Director

What You’ll Do

The Brand Director is responsible for managing and leading the fashion lifestyle brands’ direction, ensuring their continued growth and viability in the global market across all channels.  You'll lead and oversee relationships with merchandise, media, and content licensees, ensuring that they are equipped and prepared to deliver on the brand vision, all of which drive financial target achievement. You'll also be responsible for leading business development to extend the brands into new categories and ventures, including negotiating and finalizing new licensing agreements and identifying and securing growth and expansion opportunities for the brands.

What you’ll be working on

Drive brand growth performance

•  Partner with the Brand team to establish and optimize a working relationship, assuring alignment and agreement on licensing and expansion priorities.
• Engage, inspire, and galvanize the organization around the brands visions, position, and strategies, so licensees are clear in bringing them to life in their areas of functional expertise. 
• Own and evangelize the vision, position, and architecture of the lifestyle brands across merchandise, content, media, and endorsements.
• Leverage all brand components to drive awareness, growth, and financial performance.  
• Direct brand activity across various functions, including business development, marketing, and other tasks as needed.
• Apply in-depth knowledge of cost and margin structures to licensee performance planning and management. 
• Maintain brand integrity across all lines, advertising, and all other internal and external communication.
• Develop and execute Brand Summits to communicate the brand message to external partners 

Manage licensee partner relations

• Serve as the primary point of contact and relationship manager for all licensing partners.
• Establish, maintain, and revise engagement and partnership rules with licensing partners at-large and other content/media partners to minimize disruption and drive margin and performance.
• Lead development and organization of essential business development tools for licensees (i.e., product catalogs, line sheets, event development and production, and others, etc.).
•  Partner closely with each licensing partner to understand respective business models and product development cycles to drive retail profitability.
• As needed, act as principal liaison to facilitate transactions between licensee and retailer.

Drive brand development

• Develop and refine consumer target segments mapping in trends and other data to develop category growth and expansion plans.
• Present brand seasonal product lines, identifying trends and best-sellers, and calendar timing to prospective and current licensees and retailers.
• Assist in negotiating new licensing agreements; participate in sales and marketing presentations, as necessary.

Facilitate effective licensing operations

• Participate in brand strategy discussions and in setting a bulls-eye consumer target. Analyze consumer trends and information and help identify product categories to enter as future sources of growth. 
• Assist in overseeing the direction, implementation, execution, and continuous improvement of the licensing processes. 

Must Haves

• Has at least six years of experience in merchandising, business development, brand marketing, or licensing program management.
• Has a Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or comparable work experience 
• Can demonstrate a proven track record in brand management — Media, Content, Merchandising, Fashion licensing, and global brand experience a must. 
• Possesses a strong understanding of how licensing product deals are identified and negotiated.  
• Is experienced in securing and managing licensing deals in a variety of product categories. 
• Is a great researcher who stays up to date on the latest trends in celebrity branding and product opportunities. 
• Has a hands-on background with forecasting, budgeting, and analyzing royalty revenue data.
• Is an excellent communicator, verbal, written, and in the room. 
• Exhibits excellent attention to detail, is organized, and has a bias for action.
• Must have strong computer proficiency and working knowledge of MS Office. (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)