Highly creative, commercially focused and driven, with extensive experience in both field and head office Visual Merchandising and Retail leadership, working with brands including Arcadia, Reiss, Karen Millen, and Coast. From luxury to high street, I work cross functionally with design and buying teams, creative, retail, marketing, and wholesale to develop, lead and align brand vision, customer experience, and commercial objectives. Passionate about inspiring and coaching people to deliver their full potential within high performing, happy teams. I have excellent people skills and a highly motivational style. Currently Global VM Lead for Radley London, a role I began at the very start of the pandemic, I’ve built the visual strategy, and successful relationships from the bottom up, supporting portfolio changes, delivering excellence throughout the portfolio whilst introducing and streamlining process. Thinking outside of the box, problem solving, alongside developing and delivering a clear visual strategy are some of the skills I have that have seen me succeed in my roles Feel free to contact me at zoethomasson@hotmail.co.uk for any comments or questions about my work
• Highly organised and strategic, leading multiple projects, planning, brief, tender and roll out, store concept design and visual identity for multiple brands, small and large. • Budget management and build, constantly reworking and reprioritising to achieve cost savings of approx. 30% without compromise on quality / service. • Elevation of creative window schemes, driving footfall and brand, bringing all project management / supplier management / creative in house to control costs. Nominated best Christmas window scheme and internal decs VM and Display award 2023. • End to end redesign of Global store POS collateral from briefing to presentation and sign off with C suite, tender and roll out, resulting in kit fit for purpose, elevated, on brand, key to trading with agility and consistency. Slashed annual print costs by 40% and reduce waste / environmental impact. • Peak sales delivered double digit LFL growth, best Black Friday week, VM guides, planning and communication as well as creative directly impacting growth. • Creating and delivering innovative training programmes, brand guidelines, video content, writing and launching content. • Devised and rolled out seasonal Model Store process for multiple brands, globally, transforming the visual proposition, creating clear VM principles with product and customer at the heart of the store journey. • Mentoring talent to develop and retain, clear succession plan to grow team / brand.
• Developed a clear and commercial Global Visual Strategy with Retail Directors and Head of Creative for Karen Millen, applying and adapting on the acquisition of the Coast brand, including store visit and appraisal schedule and guideline review. • Orchestrated and delivered new store concept and design for brand roll out globally, including supplier brief and negotiations, working with external agencies on design. • Collaborating closely with the Creative Director, Global Retail Director, Property Director, and head office teams to develop and implement new store layouts, seasonal guidelines, delivering collections to reflect the vision of the design team, whilst remaining commercially sound. • Led communication across all HO functions and retail teams to ensure visual delivery within stores is both consistent, up to date, and reflects the product focuses and brand vision. • Developing and delivering pop ups and event spaces (the Ned, OXO tower and Somerset House as examples) • Mentoring and developing a team of 5 Visual Mangers, UK, and Europe, to deliver support and training for retail teams globally. • Managed of Global Visual budget, for both instore and windows (0.5m)
• Partnering closely with the merchandising and area management teams to maximise margin with stock profiling and space management. • Working alongside the VM Director to re-structure the department and develop the team, introduction of training and assessment tools. • Collaborating with VM, Retail and Creative Directors, key cross functional communicator. • Overall responsibility for all brand visual communication and training tools, from development to rollout. • Introduction of new processes to streamline and improve communication between Head Office and stores. • Development of new equipment for roll out, from design to supplier negotiation.
• Mentoring and developing a large team, including head office based, and field VM managers, in addition to 45 in store VM’s as indirect reports. • Investment appraisals, presentation of business cases to Arcadia CEO for sign off. • Leading the team to create and deliver regular brand updates, visual communication documents including collection guidelines, brand manuals, quarterly trend overviews and weekly visual updates and seasonal model store. • Driving and generating innovative ideas, working with all functions including Creative and Retail Directors for roll out. • Introduction and development of training tools, including VM workshops, VM training manual.
Zoe is a very talented Visual Merchandiser Manager. Highly creative, very adept at working to Budgets and very capable of following Projects through from end-to-end. She has a lovely way of managing her Teams. She was a very well respected Visual Creative expert with her peers and a nurturing Manager with her direct reports. I would highly recommend her and definitely have her as part of my team once again. Beth Butterwick
I worked closely with Zoe here at Radley, for stores both in the UK and globally. Zoe is a very hard working experienced VM Manager, with a wealth of experience, that would benefit any business she works for. She has a good understanding of both sides of a retail business, whether looking at things from a customer perspective or he retail side, which invaluable, when trying to leverage a return on investment for any creative work done in stores. I can confirm that Zoe will be a real asset to any future company she works for
Zoe has an amazing work ethic, always going above and beyond what is required. She is very commercial and ties the store VM policies to Company strategies perfectly. She listens to her key stakeholder group to understand their needs and has shown how resourceful she can be when budgets are tight.