Location: Manchester

Type: Permanent

Industry: Sportswear

Job Ref: TGN5579

The company:

An in-house sportwear/streetwear brand is looking for an Ecommerce Manager, you will manage the Group’s direct-to-consumer ecommerce channel end to end – 4 brands, 6 sites, trading in multiple currencies across sport and street fashion, and to lead the team that runs it.

 

The Head of Ecommerce, Systems & Trade Merchandising leads trade for the business. This role owns ecommerce: the sites, the customer experience, and the numbers that come from them. The successful candidate is accountable for their own ecommerce targets – conversion, margin, AOV and channel revenue – and for turning the trade direction set at Head of level into delivery onsite.

 

It is a broad remit for a single seat, and that is the appeal. Genuine ownership of a channel rather than a slice of one. It is not a marketing role, and it is not a project role.

 

Channel performance and targets

• Accountable for the ecommerce conversion, margin, AOV and revenue targets across all brands and territories.
• Translate the trade direction set by the Head of into onsite delivery – and own the outcome.
• Provide the ecommerce input into weekly trade: performance, commentary, risks and the actions being taken. Come with a view, not just a read-out.
• Identify and act on channel opportunity – category, brand, price point, territory, customer segment – rather than reporting on it after the event.
• Execute the promotional and markdown calendar onsite in line with the wider trade plan, protecting margin across brands and territories.
• Provide the ecommerce view into budget and reforecast, in partnership with the Merchandising team.

 

Site ownership and customer experience

• Own onsite merchandising across every brand site: category and collection curation, search and navigation, sort logic, cross-sell and PDP quality.
• Own and prioritise the conversion rate optimisation roadmap, including test design, measurement and rollout decisions.
• Own product data quality end to end – copy, attribution, categorisation, imagery completeness – and the processes that keep it clean across multiple brands at scale.
• Manage the onsite content and campaign calendar in partnership with Marketing, ensuring commercial priorities are properly represented.
• Own the launch process for new season, new product and new brand activity onsite, including drops and limited releases where relevant.
• Maintain a distinct commercial and customer proposition for each brand rather than running them as one template with different logos.

International and multi-currency trading

• Own trading performance by territory, including pricing, currency presentation and market-level configuration.
• Manage the commercial and customer implications of duty, tax and delivery terms across markets, working with Finance and Operations.
• Identify where territory-level performance justifies further investment, and where it does not.
• Ensure the customer experience holds up market by market – not just in the home territory.

Digital marketing interface

• Brief, direct and hold to account the paid media and CRM resource (internal and/or agency) against trading priorities.
• Provide the trading input into acquisition and retention planning; challenge spend allocation where the commercial return does not stand up.
• Monitor channel-level performance and contribution and escalate where efficiency is deteriorating.

Ecommerce operations

• Own online availability and stock file integrity, working with Merchandising and Systems.
• Manage the fulfilment relationship with the warehouse: dispatch SLAs, cut-offs, carrier performance and peak capacity planning.
• Own returns performance and the customer service escalation path.
• Lead ecommerce peak planning and readiness.

Systems, data and reporting

• Act as ecommerce business owner for the Shopify platform and supporting app stack: prioritising the roadmap, specifying requirements and making the commercial call on trade-offs.
• Represent ecommerce in systems and integration work between the platform and the ERP, including requirements, testing and sign-off.
• Partner with the Systems Engineer as an informed, specifying stakeholder. This role defines what is needed and why; it does not build it, and it does not hand over vague problems.
• Own ecommerce reporting and analytics (GA4, Shopify, Power BI etc) to a standard the wider business can rely on, including consistent metric definitions across brands.

Leadership and team development

• Line manage, coach and develop the Ecommerce Executives and Ecommerce Assistant.
• Set clear objectives, run regular one-to-ones, manage performance and build capability deliberately.
• Structure the team’s work so that each task sits at the right level – delegating transactional and executional work downward and creating headroom for genuine trading focus.
• Shape and develop the graduate role into a defined, valuable seat.
• Represent ecommerce credibly to the Leadership Team and to peers across Merchandising, Marketing, Retail and Operations.

Success in the first twelve months

By 3 months

• Fluent across every brand site and territory; contributing a genuine point of view into weekly trade.
• Clear read on team capability, with objectives set for each direct report.
• Prioritised view of the top channel opportunities and the top operational risks.

By 6 months

• Ecommerce commentary that explains performance rather than describing it and is trusted across the business.
• CRO and site merchandising roadmap live and delivering measurable movement in conversion.
• Territory-level performance understood and being actively managed rather than reported.

Person specification

Essential

• Demonstrable ownership of ecommerce performance against targets – conversion, margin, AOV and revenue – in a product-led business.
• Proven line management experience: at least one direct report, with real evidence of developing people rather than simply allocating work.
• Hands-on Shopify (or comparable enterprise platform) experience, including merchandising, product data and app ecosystem.
• Confident with analytics – GA4 or equivalent – and able to turn data into a decision rather than a report.
• Strong commercial numeracy. Comfortable interrogating and defending the numbers behind a channel.
• Experience working alongside a merchandising or buying function, with a working understanding of stock, intake, availability and markdown.
• Credible and clear with senior stakeholders; able to hold a position under challenge.
• Organised and self-directing, comfortable operating with autonomy in a business where structure is still being built.

Desirable

• Background in sport, sportswear, streetwear or fashion retail.
• Multi-brand or multi-site experience – running several propositions in parallel rather than one.
• Multi-currency or international trading experience, including market-level pricing and delivery terms.
• Exposure to a business operating across wholesale, retail and DTC.
• Experience managing agency relationships for paid media or CRM.
• Familiarity with NetSuite or a comparable ERP.

Behaviours we are looking for

• Takes ownership. Treats the channel and its numbers as their own, not as a set of tasks handed down.
• Delegates properly. Instinctively pushes work to the right level and builds people up as they do it.
• Commercially curious. Asks why the number moved before deciding what to do about it.
• Pragmatic. Comfortable in a business that is scaling and where not every process exists yet.
• Collaborative but not passive. Works well across functions and still argues the ecommerce case when it needs arguing.