Vice President Operations

The Vice President of Operations is a senior executive leader responsible for converting HobbyTown’s enterprise strategy into consistent, measurable operational performance across its franchise and corporate store network. Positioned between the Chief Operating Officer and the Regional Directors, this role provides the leadership structure, daily operational oversight, and field accountability necessary to ensure company priorities are executed consistently and completed successfully. The Vice President of Operations serves as the Chief Operating Officer’s principal execution partner and extends the COO’s leadership throughout the organization. The position assumes responsibility for the direct oversight, development, coordination, and performance of the Regional Director team, allowing the COO to remain focused on broader enterprise strategy, organizational growth, financial performance, infrastructure, and long‑term operational planning. EXECUTIVE OPERATING LEADERSHIP The Vice President of Operations directs the execution of HobbyTown’s operating model across franchise and corporate locations. This leader translates executive priorities into clearly defined operating plans, assigns accountability through the Regional Director structure, establishes timelines and performance expectations, and verifies that initiatives are completed as intended. The Vice President of Operations maintains a comprehensive view of operational performance across the store network and identifies recurring challenges, execution gaps, resource limitations, and emerging business risks before they affect broader organizational results. The position is expected to move fluidly between executive planning and field execution, maintaining sufficient strategic perspective to advise the COO while possessing the operational discipline to drive work through completion. This role leads the implementation of operational standards, new programs, store performance initiatives, recovery plans, resets, openings, process improvements, and organizational changes. The Vice President of Operations ensures that initiatives do not stall after launch and that each assignment has a clearly identified owner, timeline, success measure, and completion standard. REGIONAL DIRECTOR OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY The Vice President of Operations provides direct leadership and performance oversight for all Regional Directors. This includes establishing consistent expectations for market coverage, franchisee engagement, corporate store support, business reviews, operational assessments, project execution, communication, documentation, and follow-through. The position evaluates the effectiveness of each Regional Director based on measurable results rather than activity alone. Regional Directors are expected to complete assignments, maintain appropriate field presence, provide timely and accurate reporting, address store-level concerns, strengthen franchisee relationships, support corporate store performance, and elevate significant risks appropriately. The Vice President of Operations verifies that these responsibilities are being fulfilled and intervenes when performance, judgment, responsiveness, or execution falls below the required standard. FRANCHISEE LEADERSHIP AND RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT The Vice President of Operations serves as a primary executive-facing operational leader for HobbyTown franchisees. The position must establish credibility through responsiveness, business judgment, accurate communication, decisive follow-through, and a clear understanding of the operational and financial realities of franchise ownership. This leader ensures franchisees receive consistent and useful operational support, regardless of their assigned region. Significant franchisee concerns that cannot be resolved at the Regional Director level are elevated to the Vice President of Operations for assessment, coordination, and resolution. The Vice President determines the appropriate company response, assigns ownership, communicates expectations, and ensures the matter reaches a documented conclusion. The Vice President of Operations represents the interests of both the brand and the franchise owner. The role must maintain appropriate franchise boundaries while promoting compliance with brand standards, strengthening store‑level execution, improving owner engagement, and supporting the long‑term health of the franchise system. The Vice President also identifies trends in franchisee feedback and advises the COO and executive leadership regarding systemic issues, resource needs, policy concerns, communication gaps, and opportunities to improve the franchisee experience. CORPORATE STORE PERFORMANCE The Vice President of Operations provides executive oversight of the operational leadership structure supporting HobbyTown’s corporate-owned stores. While Regional Directors and other assigned field leaders retain responsibility for the direct management and support of their locations, the Vice President ensures that corporate stores meet established expectations for sales performance, profitability, labor management, inventory control, merchandising, customer experience, staffing, store conditions, compliance, and brand presentation. This leader reviews operational and financial performance across the corporate store portfolio, identifies underperforming locations, and directs the development of store‑specific recovery strategies. Performance concerns must result in defined actions, responsible owners, measurable targets, and follow‑up dates. The Vice President of Operations ensures that corporate locations serve as credible representations of HobbyTown’s operating model and as practical testing environments for new initiatives, processes, technology, merchandising strategies, and customer‑experience standards before broader implementation. OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE AND BUSINESS REVIEWS The Vice President of Operations establishes a disciplined operating cadence through weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual business reviews. These reviews must connect field activity to measurable outcomes and provide executive leadership with an accurate assessment of store performance, regional effectiveness, franchisee risk, project status, and operational priorities. The position partners with Finance, Human Resources, Retail Sales, Marketing, Merchandising, Technology, and other functional leaders to evaluate performance across key measures, including sales, profitability, labor, inventory, shrink, staffing, turnover, customer experience, franchisee engagement, project completion, and compliance with operational standards. The Vice President of Operations is responsible for identifying the cause of performance gaps and determining whether corrective action requires stronger field execution, additional resources, process changes, leadership intervention, training, financial analysis, or cross‑functional support. Findings and recommendations must be presented to the COO in a concise, actionable format. STORE OPENINGS, RESETS, RECOVERY, AND SPECIAL PROJECTS The Vice President of Operations provides executive coordination and accountability for new store openings, relocations, remodels, store resets, operational recoveries, ownership transitions, and other significant field projects. This position establishes the operating plan, confirms readiness standards, coordinates cross‑functional support, assigns Regional Director responsibilities, monitors progress, removes barriers, and verifies completion. A store opening, reset, or recovery assignment is not considered complete until all agreed deliverables have been satisfied, unresolved items have documented owners and deadlines, and the store or franchisee has received an appropriate operational handoff. The Vice President must be available to provide on‑site leadership during critical project phases, including the period leading up to store openings, grand openings, resets, and recovery operations. The position may assume direct command of a project when operational risk, leadership failure, franchisee impact, or business urgency requires executive intervention. Following significant projects, the Vice President conducts a formal review of outcomes, expenses, execution challenges, unresolved issues, and lessons learned to strengthen future planning and prevent recurring failures. OPERATIONAL STANDARDS AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT The Vice President of Operations is responsible for strengthening and standardizing the systems through which HobbyTown operates. This includes evaluating existing procedures, identifying unnecessary variation, clarifying ownership, and developing repeatable operating practices that can scale with the organization. In partnership with the appropriate functional leaders, the Vice President supports the development and implementation of operating procedures, audit tools, performance scorecards, readiness assessments, project plans, reporting requirements, escalation standards, and field communication protocols. This role ensures that operational expectations are practical, clearly communicated, supported by appropriate training, and consistently reinforced. When an operational requirement is not producing the intended result, the Vice President evaluates whether the failure is caused by the standard itself, the communication of the standard, insufficient resources, or inadequate execution. TRAVEL AND AVAILABILITY This position requires extensive travel of up to 70%, including overnight travel, air travel, driving, and periodic weekend or evening responsibilities. The Vice President of Operations must be available to support store openings, grand openings, resets, store recoveries, ownership transitions, urgent operational issues, franchisee meetings, conferences, and community or marketing events. #J-18808-Ljbffr