Director of Stores

at  Specsavers

Purpose of the role
The Director of Stores is responsible for leading and managing a team of four Regional Relationship Managers (RRMs) who will focus on New and Existing Specsavers stores. Their remit is to ensure that new stores launch and start to operate successfully to meet performance and business expectations. They will work regularly and closely with a store’s Partners to ensure they are effective, and capable of achieving their budgets and business plans and take corrective action where needed.
The Director of Stores has overall accountability for driving the sustainable performance and growth within their portfolio of ~80 stores, achieving consistent standards and improvement to ensure long term profitability and growth. This role is pivotal in ensuring that new stores launch and continue to operate successfully and meet performance and business expectations.
This role reports to and works closely with the Retail Director for Canada. They will be the senior lead in their geographical area and will collaborate with and coordinate the leads for property, BD, recruitment, partnership, clinical and training. Key to the role is the ability to coach RRMs and store partners to become effective, capable of achieving their budgets and business plans with effective intervention from the retail support team.
Key Responsibilities

Trading, Growth and Profitability:

• Take a leadership role for overall trading performance of all stores within their geographical region
• Accountability for the P&L for their region and delivering partner profit targets
• Responsible for ensuring the onboarding, development, and training of all Partners within their region
• Creation and delivery of a program to support new Partners from 3 months before their store opens, to 3 months afterwards, and beyond
• Support the partners and RRMs with the formulation and creation of their store annual business plan
• Ensuring there is clear colleague/labour resource planning in all stores and working with the recruitment team to address opportunities
• Work with RRMs, partners and marketing teams to ensure effective cross-functional volume growth plans are in place
• Proactively share best practices from other regions
• Support the RRMs to ensure partners to deliver the best possible customer journey, recommending improvements and support available to support this
• Develop a plan for the region to ensure we have the appropriate physical capacity in our businesses for the next 5 years
• Responsible for delivering the Canadian annual plan, and other support office initiatives, within the region

Leadership:

• Overall leadership across their region
• Deliver the overall Canada Leadership group Annual Plan activity within the region and drive and implement change initiatives
• Cross-functional leadership across all functions within the region, even if not reporting into this role
• Key contact for managing and supporting key third party stakeholders within the region eg colleges, government representatives, associations
• Identify and feedback the needs from the team and partners to ensure support is provided from the wider support office
• Build, train and coach a team of RRMs to be effective and successful in their roles
• Lead region-wide events and forums to ensure clear direction, effective communication and relevant development is in place for Partners and teams

Risk Management:

• Ensure financial and underperforming stores are quickly identified and have a bespoke plan to improve volume and profit within 8 to 12 weeks.
• Engage support cross-functionally to ensure risks are mitigated and business targets are met
• Ensure stores represent the Specsavers brand and are always compliant