The Role
The Senior Design Manager – Will be a vital member of the Design & Development Leadership Team. Reporting into the Head of Design and Development and working closely with, and alongside the Head of Strategy & Operations.
Your leadership and Creative Direction and Product knowledge will shape the design & development of future ranges, coupled with the smooth day to day running and management of your team, alongside the critical path and additional projects.
You will lead your Menswear Design Team, to create style aware ranges in line with the brand design pillars, with a strong emphasis on commerciality. Leveraging brand and evolving it to keep it relevant with the current and future market.
You Will
1. Deliver two seasonal collections across Menswear through the style aesthetic lens of Heritage & Vintage, Premium and Sportswear.
2. Work with business key stakeholders to ensure that brand appropriate products are delivered within the relevant seasonal time frames and brand critical path.
3. Create and support with seasonal design direction, product development, branding, brand marks and prints in line with our product construct principles and brand pillars.
4. Articulate the design vision and direction to your design team and business key stakeholders, giving additional support and coaching where required.
5. Deliver against the seasonal strategy and visual range plan, through strong leadership, focus and efficient and effective ways of working.
6. Have a clear understanding of consumer initiatives, strategic positioning, target audience and be able to identify consumer opportunities, ensuring concept and vision is delivered for the target consumer.
7. Deliver the seasonal range through style segmentation, optimisation through our range construct of Entry/Core and positioning through Statement and Exploration.
8. Work with the business senior leadership team across, Design, Product Strategy, Quality & Technical, Sourcing, Brand Creative, Marketing, Merchandising, Retail, Ecom and Wholesale to deliver projects and goals in line with the brand strategy.
9. Take an agile and solution focussed approach to delivering quick turnaround projects to capitalise on in season opportunities, with the ability to be agile and cut through complexity.
10. Be responsible for creative brand standards, instilling best practice and ways of working within the team in all aspects of product presentations.
11. Oversee, manage, and select development of fabric, trim, branding and materials in line with our range segmentation.
12. Lead and support your team continuously, looking for ways to upskill and support them with their personal career progression and development.
13. Provide supervision as well as training and development, holding regular 121 sessions to provide feedback.
14. Ensure professional and consistent ‘House Style’ standards of presentations and information being delivered internally and externally by the team.
15. Embed a positive and progressive creative culture throughout the team, demonstrated through a collaborative, focused and open approach.
You Are
16. Someone with demonstratable experience of working in a senior management role within a clothing fashion brand.
17. An accomplished people manager and supportive leader, experienced in developing and leading high performing teams and individuals.
18. Creative, with a strong understanding of ‘brand’, style, and product.
19. Highly experienced in Menswear apparel and have a strong understanding of all category design disciplines.
20. An apparel expert. Using knowledge, logic, and creativity to innovate and unlock future opportunities.
21. Commercial. Leveraging your understanding of brand, marketplace dynamics to ensure high returns on design & development investment.
22. In touch with culture, community, and style aware.
23. Able to cut through complexity rapidly, to set clear direction.
24. Adept in collaborating across different disciplines and teams but also able to deliver work individually.
25. An effective communicator and have great influencing skills, from teams on the ground up to Exec level.
26. Great at building and leveraging brand equity to grow businesses through market channels across key international markets.
27. A strategic and future thinker. Balancing logic and creativity to solve complex problems to unlock future opportunity and always a step ahead.
28. Great at working in a fast paced and evolving environment with the ability to prioritise multiple projects.
29. Advanced knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite and PLM software.
Working for Superdry has never been so rewarding…
30. 25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, we also offer a holiday buying scheme
31. An additional day off to celebrate your Birthday
32. Family is massively important to us, so we have a broad range of family-friendly working policies in place, including enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
33. Company Pension scheme
34. All employees are covered by our Life Assurance policy whilst working at Superdry. We feel it’s important to offer protection for your family and loved ones in such a situation and to support this we offer life assurance cover which pays a lump sum equivalent either twice or four times your annual salary
35. A big staff discount – naturally. Because we know that you love to wear Superdry, you’ll benefit from a 50% discount in store and online
36. Our Head Office is home to our very own store for staff only where you can treat yourself to heavily discounted sample stock
37. A health cash plan is open to all employees.
38. Flexible working and core working hours between 10am – 4pm to help you achieve that all-important work-life balance
39. Access to onsite parking and as part of our sustainable development goals, we have a selection of electrical car parking points freely available to staff.
40. A range of learning and development materials to help you in your career and grow with us
41. We like to give back, so we allow our employees time off for volunteering work
42. A global employee assistance plan in place that you can access anytime you want - it’s free and confidential
43. You’ll also have access to a Cycle To Work Scheme and an excellent Car contract hire/purchase scheme
44. A range of local discounts with businesses across Gloucestershire
At Superdry, everyone has a voice and we want to hear it. We create environments where individuality can flourish and is celebrated as part of who we are as a brand. We’re incredibly proud that over 90% of our people feel strongly that they can be themselves at work.
We want to meet people with varied backgrounds because we understand that diversity of thought encourages new ideas to thrive, fuelling creativity and enabling us to do better work. We want to build a team which represents a variety of backgrounds, styles, perspectives, and skills; we hire people based on their merit and potential.
We also welcome conversations about flexible working for all roles at Superdry and will always accommodate it where possible.
Please also have a look at our Here you can find information about the Growing Futures Programme, a scheme that supports applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds to apply for roles at our HO in Cheltenham.