About me

A highly talented, award winning and professional creative leader with over 13 years’ experience in the creation, planning and delivery of brand strategic visions. An expertise in creative direction and a track record of delivering complex projects and transformations to deadline and budget. A natural leader who can build, develop, motivate and manage high performing teams. A strength in building relationships, trust, collaborating cross functionally and engaging with a variety of stakeholders.

QuestionsProjectsExperienceTeam

• Im looking for a new creative or visual director role after unfortunately losing my job during covid19.

Work history

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Store experience directorGap retail
Sep 2013 - May 2020London, United KingdomFull Time
To create and maintain the differing monthly, seasonal and annual Global and European brand strategies. • Developed seasonal and annual vision for the differing markets of Europe and worldwide, gathered data from a variety of sources, utilised expertise and commercial awareness to analyse, identified trends and patterns and created strategies that drove organisational reputation and revenue growth. • Collaborated cross functionally with European senior leadership team to implement strategies, engaged individually to understand requirements and provided rationale for recommendations, tailored deliverables accordingly, adopted a supportive and communicative approach that built trusting relationships, influenced and gained buy in. • Built matrix teams, identified skill requirements, utilised internal resources and engaged with ex- ternal suppliers to gather appropriate candidates, facilitated the selection process successfully filling all recruitment needs. • Managed 5 direct reports, engaged individually to understand needs and set expectations, adopt- ed a supportive and coaching approach, monitored performance and utilised feedback, successful- ly enabling ownership, development of skills, career progression and high-performance delivery. • Developed seasonal and monthly creative direction collaborating with both EU and Global senior leadership for all window schemes, in store creative treatments, external pop ups and collabora- tions. Using my skill of project managing numerous tasks and bringing to the business external vendors we could work with that where capable to help deliver. All brand objectives were delivered on time and in budget, and always highly praised. • Ensured that the creative annual budget of £10 million was kept to and ensured the finance team and senior leadership understood and aligned with where I believed the money needed to be allo- cated to. • Managed the creative and art direction, collaborating with the marketing team on all point of sale, print, online and social asset and requirements. EXAMPLES OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS • Created innovative ways to showcase specific seasonal product statements. Examples being the white t-shirt shop. This would showcase every white t-shirt shape available, detailing what the at- tributes of each garment .The average units per store would triple in sales every time we installed the statement. the interactive Kids flippy sequin T-shirts large scale installation on the exterior windows of the flagship London store. Saw a 200% increase in sales. The public could touch and feel and make patterns on the material. The window was installed for 2 weeks. • Introduced digital window screens for every store window. brought into the business a platform the in-house artwork team could use and had them trained to be able to upload content. Not only did this allow the business to be super reactive to sales, but it saved the business over £750,000 in the first 3 years, it payed back the business outlay after 2 years. Also importantly it reduced the usage of paper. • Brought the idea of Customisation of denim to GAP EU. Project managing and aligning my thoughts with senior leadership. It launched in 2016 and the brand has seen incremental sales of £2 million since its launch. The stores that had the customisation area saw profits that were 13% points better in sales of denim than stores without the statement. • Designed and developed several pop ups shops for GAP. The Brewer street 50th anniversary pop up shop linkIng up with ID magazine in September 2019, saw the brand reach to 6.4million people and delivered 15million impressions, and 90,000 editorial views. This was a 19% increase on planned delivery. The pop up took £20,000 in 4 weeks, double what was targeted. • Led the introduction of customisation to GAP OUTLET. In 2018 I collaborated with MCARTHUR GLEN and introduced a pop up truck to several key Outlet stores. The My first personalisation truck which was live for 27 days in 2 locations delivered 2846 personalisations. York Outlet comped 30% points better than stores without the truck. Mansfield comped 40% better than stores without. Traffic grew by over 10% versus stores without. In April and May in 2019 we repeated the idea on kids clothing which was the target for the brand. Cheshire oaks saw a 12% lift in traffic and a 23% lift in sales. York delivered a 14% traffic lift and a 20% lift in sales. • Managed the creative direction on Adult denim, introducing digital screens that showcased the fit of a jean on a model rather than the small paper graphics that were being used. I would focus on new fits and rises,. Women’s denim was a huge part of the the brands business. EU stores would see 31% better sales in women’s denim versus the North American vm set up. I was able to gen- erate this through my vm techniques to focus customer attention by placing in the best sightline position in store, create graphics and imagery that always showcased features and benefits and therefore a reason to buy. Examples such as the high rise cigarette denim which took 12% of the sales mix off only 4% inventory. High rise jeans were a massive push globally in 2019. I got our strategies. • Developed seasonal and annual vision for the differing markets of Europe and worldwide, gathered data from a variety of sources, utilised expertise and commercial awareness to analyse, identified trends and patterns and created strategies that drove organisational reputation and revenue growth. • Collaborated cross functionally with European senior leadership team to implement strategies, engaged individually to understand requirements and provided rationale for recommendations, tailored deliverables accordingly, adopted a supportive and communicative approach that built trusting relationships, influenced and gained buy in. • Built matrix teams, identified skill requirements, utilised internal resources and engaged with ex- ternal suppliers to gather appropriate candidates, facilitated the selection process successfully filling all recruitment needs. • Managed 5 direct reports, engaged individually to understand needs and set expectations, adopt- ed a supportive and coaching approach, monitored performance and utilised feedback, successful- ly enabling ownership, development of skills, career progression and high-performance delivery. • Developed seasonal and monthly creative direction collaborating with both EU and Global senior leadership for all window schemes, in store creative treatments, external pop ups and collabora- tions. Using my skill of project managing numerous tasks and bringing to the business external vendors we could work with that where capable to help deliver. All brand objectives were delivered on time and in budget, and always highly praised. • Ensured that the creative annual budget of £10 million was kept to and ensured the finance team and senior leadership understood and aligned with where I believed the money needed to be allocated to. • Managed the creative and art direction, collaborating with the marketing team on all point of sale, print, online and social asset and requirements. EXAMPLES OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS • Created innovative ways to showcase specific seasonal product statements. Examples being the white t-shirt shop. This would showcase every white t-shirt shape available, detailing what the at- tributes of each garment .The average units per store would triple in sales every time we installed the statement. the interactive Kids flippy sequin T-shirts large scale installation on the exterior windows of the flagship London store. Saw a 200% increase in sales. The public could touch and feel and make patterns on the material. The window was installed for 2 weeks. • Introduced digital window screens for every store window. brought into the business a platform the in-house artwork team could use and had them trained to be able to upload content. Not only did this allow the business to be super reactive to sales, but it saved the business over £750,000 in the first 3 years, it payed back the business outlay after 2 years. Also importantly it reduced the usage of paper. • Brought the idea of Customisation of denim to GAP EU. Project managing and aligning my thoughts with senior leadership. It launched in 2016 and the brand has seen incremental sales of £2 million since its launch. The stores that had the customisation area saw profits that were 13% points better in sales of denim than stores without the statement. • Designed and developed several pop ups shops for GAP. The Brewer street 50th anniversary pop up shop linkIng up with ID magazine in September 2019, saw the brand reach to 6.4million people and delivered 15million impressions, and 90,000 editorial views. This was a 19% increase on planned delivery. The pop up took £20,000 in 4 weeks, double what was targeted. • Led the introduction of customisation to GAP OUTLET. In 2018 I collaborated with MCARTHUR GLEN and introduced a pop up truck to several key Outlet stores. The My first personalisation truck which was live for 27 days in 2 locations delivered 2846 personalisations. York Outlet comped 30% points better than stores without the truck. Mansfield comped 40% better than stores without. Traffic grew by over 10% versus stores without. In April and May in 2019 we repeated the idea on kids clothing which was the target for the brand. Cheshire oaks saw a 12% lift in traffic and a 23% lift in sales. York delivered a 14% traffic lift and a 20% lift in sales. • Managed the creative direction on Adult denim, introducing digital screens that showcased the fit of a jean on a model rather than the small paper graphics that were being used. I would focus on new fits and rises,. Women’s denim was a huge part of the the brands business. EU stores would see 31% better sales in women’s denim versus the North American vm set up. I was able to gen- erate this through my vm techniques to focus customer attention by placing in the best sightline position in store, create graphics and imagery that always showcased features and benefits and therefore a reason to buy. Examples such as the high rise cigarette denim which took 12% of the sales mix off only 4% inventory. High rise jeans were a massive push globally in 2019. I got our mix to 50% of all sales versus 30% in North America.
HEAD OF CREATIVEArcadia
Aug 2007 - Aug 2013London, United KingdomFull Time
Headed up a department of 18 staff (12 field based) Control and management of department creative budget of £2 million Creative direction and management for all window schemes/creative in-store treatments Art Direction on shoots for windows, in-store graphics, marketing, online home/feature pages Store Layout and VM principles through Model Store and monthly VM layout updates Creative vision and development of the Brands store design/equipment

Skills

• Project Management
• Creative Direction
• Leadership
• Budget Management
• Cross-functional
• Build Relationships

Awards

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The GAP RIVET for outstanding achievementGap Inc UK
For outstanding achievement.
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THE GAP BLUE BOXGap inc
Global recognition on my creative projects I delivered

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