Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE:RL) is a global leader in the design, marketing and distribution of premium lifestyle products in five categories: apparel, accessories, home, fragrances, and hospitality. For more than 50 years, Ralph Lauren's reputation and distinctive image have been consistently developed across an expanding number of products, brands and international markets. The Company's brand names, which include Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren Collection, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Polo Ralph Lauren, Double RL, Lauren Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren Children, Chaps, among others, constitute one of the world's most widely recognized families of consumer brands.
At Ralph Lauren, we unite and inspire the communities within our company as well as those in which we serve by amplifying voices and perspectives to create a culture of belonging, ensuring inclusion, and fairness for all. We foster a culture of inclusion through: Talent, Education & Communication, Employee Groups and Celebration.
Position overview
The Visual Merchandising Assistant supports the team by ensuring the online visual appeal of the website is executed and maintained to a luxury standard, whilst putting the customer at the centre of every decision and actions that is made.
They will ensure the product merchandising plan is executed accurately and on time. They will work cross functionally to collaboratively execute the product lifecycle and merchandising improvements on site. They will continuously monitor the site to ensure that all products are showing online, with the execution in line with our flagship requirements. They will site walk daily, monitoring the customer journey and aiming to troubleshoot customer facing issues ahead of those being called out to the contact centre.
They will be aware of financial targets, seasonal buys and forecast in order to make the best merchandising decisions and will present back on performance in weekly trade meetings.
Please note, this is a 12 month fixed term contract.
Essential duties & responsibilities
- Execute Visual Merchandising plan.
- Resolve issues as quickly as possible to optimise sales
- Daily site checks and merchandising improvements.
- Know their divisional seasonal buy to merchandise appropriately.
- Support divisional leads with curation of seasonal playbooks to plan on site seasonal trading strategy.
- Monitor top sellers and stock levels to trade performance and feedback with buying & planning.
- Partner with the Digital Site Operations team in the product go live process.
- Support with execution of onsite campaigns, product or promotions, product launches, and seasonal activity.
Cross functional partnerships
- Digital Site Operations
- Content
- Web Operations
- Marketing
- Strategy & Customer Experience
- Buying & Planning
Visual Merchandising
- Action product sequencing within categories across all pages to drive UPT and CVR.
- Ensure customer experiences is seamless throughout the funnel by consistently performing checks of product pages, category pages, cross-sells, search keywords, navigational elements and more
- Maintain and optimize product attribution for the product assortment
- Ensure products have the required data and imagery to launch on time, working to resolve any issues as quickly as possible
- Conduct daily site walks including data analysis and site optimisation.
- Analyse best sellers and stock levels in reaction to trade performance and upcoming promotional activity to optimise online sales.
- Execute site navigation, customer journey and product placement devised within Visual Merch plan or instructed by senior team members and strategy seasonal insights.
Analysis and Reporting
- Prepare and present weekly and ad hoc trading performance to the team, identifying any actions leveraging reporting tools such as Adobe Analytics, Edited and Content Square and reviewing key insights vs WoW & YoY.
- Support and update the trade calendar in accordance with regional trading events and product launches.
- Proactively work with the DTC merchandising teams to ensure stock opportunities are maximised for the Digital Channel. Feedback any relevant key product trends, risks and opportunities to our buying and merchandising team as well as wider trade team.
- Monitor onsite performance of site storefronts and report and analyse the key onsite metrics across conversion, funnel, click through rate and page performance. Assist with the sequencing for categories across all pages to drive UPT and CVR.
- Collaborate with all relevant marketing stakeholders to provide insights to optimise SEO and gain a basic understanding of SEO impact on site.
Seasonal, Promotional and Campaign
- Support Manager in curation of seasonal playbooks, leveraging seasonal buy sheets and assortment strategy to inform the on-site execution plan
- Attend all virtual line openings to gain knowledge of your divisional seasonal buys in order to inform and support your lead with strategic planning.
- During in-season trading, execute the on-site visual merchandising strategy and optimise navigation journey ensuring seasonally relevant & captures key category trends.
- Work closely with content team to advice on linking strategy for upcoming content plans and taking part in all UAT activities for refreshes.
- Support Manager in promotional planning and execution across UAT activities & merchandising optimisation and carry out regular reviews of competitor activity.
- Conduct comprehensive post-event and promotion analysis, identifying successes and areas for improvement.
Experience, Skills & Knowledge
- 1+ full strategic cycles experience (can be from an internship)
- Passion to work in a luxury fashion brand
- Strong Excel skills (Pivot & Vlookup) to manipulate big data sets
- Strong communication skills, both written and verbal
- Good understanding of web tools (Salesforce Excel, Adobe Analytics and Content Square is a plus)
- Highly organized with a sharp eye for detail
- A willingness to get stuck in and learn
- Data driven. Strong analytical and numerical skills.
- Demonstrated aptitude for technology, including understanding product data flows and e-commerce software
- Positive, “can-do” attitude
- Willingness to be flexible and pivot across multiple tasks and priorities as necessary
- Proactive and shows initiative for needed improvements and problem solving
- Team orientated and willing to work as part of a collective.
- An entrepreneurial and progression-hungry mindset
