Career Opportunity
Business Development & Strategy Manager
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Company Description
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
We are seeking a highly motivated and strategically driven Business Development & Strategy Manager to join our Wholesale Digital Team. This role is critical in building forward-looking strategies while identifying new growth opportunities with special focus on assortment analysis and brands performance. You will play a pivotal role in driving digital business, growing high focus categories while enhancing brand performance.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
Support Wholesale Digital Strategy:
- Lead the creation and delivery of department-level strategic frameworks and presentations, ensuring alignment with executive objectives and overall business goals
- Support the development and refinement of business strategies, leveraging market insights and internal data to drive growth and competitive advantage
- Act as the key liaison between leadership and business units to ensure consistency in strategic direction and operational alignment across departments
Lead Digital Players Assortment Analysis & Optimization:
- Lead projects on evaluation of partners’ brands and category performances to optimize product assortment, identify gaps, opportunities, and underperforming areas
- Develop data-driven assortment recommendations tailored to key digital accounts (both Pure Players and Bricks&Clicks), ensuring an optimal mix of products based on consumer demand and market trends
- Ideate and lead analysis aiming to increase existing assortment coverage across key accounts, balancing core and seasonal product offer to support company strategic goals while catering to customer needs
- Ideate and build dashboards to monitor sell-out performance across key accounts, identifying early bestsellers and providing insights to drive timely seasonal reorders
Lead Data Analysis & Insights:
- Utilize various analytical tools and methodologies (e.g., Excel, BI tools, market research platforms) to drive actionable insights. Present data-driven recommendations to key stakeholders to influence business development initiatives
- Conduct competitive benchmarking and analysis to identify untapped opportunities in the market, using insights to inform partner and country relevant assortment strategies
- Use internal data, external market research tools, and competitive intelligence to stay ahead of industry trends, customer preferences, and competitor actions to maintain a competitive edge
- Ideate, build and maintain reports to track performance KPIs, measure business impact, and guide decision-making
Building Relationships with Key Stakeholders:
- Coordinate with regional teams and cross-functional stakeholders to align key growth objectives, business development initiatives and ensure seamless execution across markets
- Build strong relationships both internally and externally and serve as the liaison between digital sales and merchandising teams to jointly curate and refine assortment strategies, ensuring alignment with partner-specific needs as well as with the company growth strategies
- Work together with Key Partners to collect, filter, and manage their requests, acting as the voice of the digital channel and maximizing the opportunities across EMEA region
- Coordinate workshops working closely with regional sales teams, buying and planning teams to unlock growth opportunities and to jointly identify “white spots”, ensuring that the product assortment is fully aligned with market demands
Experience, Skills, and Knowledge
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics, Marketing, Data Science or equivalent preferred
- 6-8 years of experience in business development and or strategic commercial roles, assortment planning or a similar position, preferably within wholesale, e-commerce, retail or fashion industries
- Entrepreneurial spirit with a proactive approach to finding new opportunities and driving growth
- Exceptional problem-solving skills and ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously working with tight deadlines andunder pressure
- Proven ability to manage, navigate and innovatively interpret complex data both internal (sell in, sell out, sell through, stock,re-order) and external market data (Edited, Statista,.) translating them in actionable insights
- Enthusiasm, positivity and team spirit
- Strong proficiency in analytical tools such as Excel (advanced Excel is a must), BI platforms (PowerBI, Dataiku), and market research tools
- Excellent organization, communication, presentation and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across different teams
- Fully proficient in working in English, any other language is an asset
- Affinity with the brand and product, knowledge of fashion digital and retail industry trends and dynamics is a plus
