Commercial Director – Sports
Reporting to: CEO
Territory Responsibility: Group
Direct Reports: Senior Group Retail Business Manager(s), Group Retail Business Manager(s), Group Marketing Manager, Group Brand Manager(s) – Sports division only
Key Stakeholders: Country General Managers
Department: Commercial
Job Band: MGMT
Role Overview:
The Commercial Director role is responsible for managing the overall brand portfolio for the relevant
business unit (Sports). They act as key custodians of the commercial strategy, ensuring all
brand activities are aligned with the group’s objectives, and ensure that profitability is delivered while
maintaining brand integrity across all markets. This role defines and executes the marketing and visual
merchandising (VM) activities and guidelines, through their teams, to ensure brand consistency and
growth across all markets.
The Commercial Director is responsible for maintaining relationships with suppliers, achieving revenue
and profitability targets in collaboration with the General Managers in-country, and driving brand
and/or banner performance and customer engagement through the direction of a team of Brand and/or
Retail Business Managers and Marketing Managers.
What you will do:
- Setting out specific brand and/or banner commercial strategies for the sports division, flowing from Hudson’s group-wide growth ambitions and brand priorities, as defined by the CEO and Board.
- Lead strategic alignment on commercial strategies with internal stakeholders.
- Defining performance objectives for Group Retail Business Managers, aligned to the commercial strategies for each brand and/or banner.
- Lead commercial planning, budgeting, and forecasting for all brands within the division; define revenue, margin, cost, and inventory targets.
- Guiding and aligning General Managers, ensuring that each brand/banner is scaled effectively and represented accurately in each local market, to achieve financial objectives.
- Own the seasonal Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ensure the effective alignment of product, marketing, merchandising, and retail and wholesale execution.
- Ensure seamless coordination across buying, planning, marketing, brand experience, and in-country teams.
- Approve seasonal buy strategies, global and country pricing parameters, and inventory allocation frameworks.
- Translate market intelligence, customer insights, and country-level feedback into actionable strategies.
- Drive cross-functional collaboration to ensure VM, product, marketing, and customer experience standards are consistent and brand-right.
- Act as a key decision-maker for in-season activations, NOS coverage, and product performance response.
- Promote the integration of sustainability targets, ESG standards, and responsible inventory practices into commercial planning.
How you will be measured:
Financial Targets
- Sales & Gross Profit performance against annual targets across brands and/or banner portfolio
- shared objective with General Managers in the regions.
- Sell-through rates and stock turns, as set as part of the budgeting process.
- Accuracy of Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy and on-time delivery, as measured by delivery of the GTM strategy to each country at agreed timelines.
- Margin performance and pricing effectiveness per brand/banner, as measured against achieved margin %, including price basket analysis and competitor price benchmarking to assess positioning.
- Marketing and Visual Marketing (VM) alignment across countries, through delivery of VM guidelines for each brand/banner within the respective countries in a timely manner to enable execution.
- Product availability and allocation efficiency, as reflected in adequate inventory cover as per the agreed targets per banner/brand; rate of stock-outs vs. availability at SKU level for NOS inventory & seasonal allocation accuracy.
Team Performance and Development
- Quarterly performance check-ins with each Brand and/or Retail Business Manager and Marketing Manager, to review progress on objectives and redirect activities, as needed.
- Identifying training and development needs of the commercial team and defining development plans, in collaboration with HR.
Stakeholder Engagement
- Effective supplier engagement as measured through a supplier scorecard (quality, reliability, compliance, responsiveness).
- Cost efficiency improvements achieved via product discount, product allocation for specific SKU’s, other elements such as payment terms, freight & delivery conditions that might result in higher handling costs.
- Effective collaboration with General Managers in the region to ensure global strategies can be rolled out effectively in local markets.
- Ensuring timely and effective product and brand training as measured by:
- % of staff trained on new collections/products before launch.
- Training satisfaction/effectiveness scores (post-training surveys).
Competencies required:
- Strategic planning
- Highly collaborative
- Highly effective communication skills
- Strong business and financial acumen
- Leadership skills
- Self-motivated
What you will bring to the role:
- Proven track record in commercial leadership within retail sectors.
- Demonstrated success managing multi-brand sports portfolios across multiple countries.
- Strong strategic mindset with deep commercial acumen and business planning expertise.
- Advanced understanding of merchandising, pricing, brand management, and marketing.
- Collaborative leadership style, adept at aligning cross-functional and multicultural teams.
- High proficiency in forecasting, margin management, and capital allocation.
- Strong communication and influencing skills, including experience reporting to senior stakeholders and boards.
- Commitment to sustainability, innovation, and customer-centric decision-making.
- 10+ years in senior commercial roles with full P&L responsibility.
- Fluency in English; other languages an advantage
