VP - Merchandising, Design & Product Development, Womenswear

Our client is seeking a highly strategic, fashion-forward, and commercially driven Vice President of Merchandising, Design & Product Development to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of their Ladies’ Sleepwear and Loungewear businesses.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and execute the seasonal and long-term merchandising, design, and product development strategy across Ladies’ and Men’s Sleepwear and Loungewear.
• Identify global fashion, color, fabric, print, graphic, and silhouette trends, translating them into commercially relevant, customer-focused assortments.
• Drive creative direction and product innovation, partnering with design and art teams to elevate product aesthetics, quality, and differentiation.
• Lead the complete product lifecycle, ensuring development calendars, sampling, fit, approvals, costing, and production milestones are achieved on time.
• Partner with sourcing and costing teams to achieve aggressive cost targets while maintaining product integrity, quality, fashion relevance, and margin.
• Lead competitive shopping, benchmarking, and market analysis to identify product opportunities, emerging trends, and competitive advantages.
• Ensure product strategy and execution align with customer expectations, value proposition, calendar requirements, and business objectives.
• Champion the strategic use of AI, 3D design, and digital product development tools to accelerate speed-to-market, improve visualization, and enhance efficiency.
• Align merchandising, design, art, product development, sourcing, costing, production, and sales teams around shared business goals and deadlines.
• Build, mentor, and develop a high-performing organization that fosters creativity, accountability, collaboration, and commercial excellence.

Qualifications & Experience

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in fashion merchandising, design, product development, or a related apparel discipline.
• Proven success leading senior merchandising, design, and product development teams.
• Significant experience in Ladies’ and/or Men’s Sleepwear, Loungewear, Apparel, or related categories.
• Deep knowledge of fashion trends, merchandising strategy, fabrics, color, silhouettes, prints, graphics, construction, and product development.
• Extensive experience in costing, sourcing, vendor negotiations, and value engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to deliver fashion-right, commercially successful product at aggressive price points while protecting quality and profitability.
• Strong understanding of mass-market and value-oriented retail, competitive benchmarking, and consumer insights.
• Proven ability to manage complex product development calendars and deliver against demanding customer deadlines.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, presentation, negotiation, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Strong commercial instincts, financial acumen, and the ability to balance creative vision with disciplined execution.
• Experience with AI-powered design tools, 3D apparel technology, Browzwear, Raspberry AI, or comparable platforms is strongly preferred.

Please submit your resume for consideration!