Vice President Sports

As VP Sports, you will lead one of the company's most strategically important divisions, setting the long-term vision, growth strategy, and commercial performance of the Sports business. Operating at the intersection of customer demand, brand partnerships, and market trends, you will drive division expansion, profitability, and competitive differentiation within a fast-growing digital retail environment. As a member of the Commercial Leadership Team, you will shape business-wide strategy while building and leading a cross functional team, and personally developing partnerships with leading global sports brands. 

Responsibilities:

• Together with your Planning counterpart, you hold commercial and strategic ownership of the Sports division in a fast-paced e-commerce, members-only environment, accountable for the delivery of financial targets across revenue, margin, sell-through, and for the investment decisions that underpin them. 

• Set the long-term vision and multi-year strategy for the Sports division, defining where and how to invest for growth and shaping priorities that influence the wider agenda across the business. 

• Set the commercial and buying framework across global and local sports brands, empowering the team to execute seasonal and in-season strategy while balancing commercial performance, consumer demand, product innovation, and brand relevance within an off-price e-commerce model. 

• Own and optimize the Sports assortment architecture using performance data, customer insights, market trends, and category intelligence to maximize commercial impact and customer acquisition. 

• Build and expand strategic relationships with leading sports brands, personally sponsoring the most strategic global partnerships at executive level and steering complex, high-stakes negotiations that shape long-term supply, commercial terms, and exclusivity. 

• Drive commercial performance through deep analysis of key e-commerce KPIs, including sell-through, conversion, stock availability, pricing architecture, inventory productivity, and category performance. 

• Monitor market trends, consumer behavior, sports participation trends, and competitor activity to identify growth opportunities and ensure the assortment remains relevant, differentiated, and commercially successful. 

• Collaborate closely with Planning, Trading, Marketing, CRM, and Supply Chain teams to ensure seamless execution of the commercial strategy across all digital touchpoints, ensuring clear communication of performance, risks, and opportunities. 

• Build, lead, and develop a high performing team, fostering a culture of ownership, accountability, and commercial excellence, and building the leadership bench and succession pipeline for the Sports division. 

• Represent the Sports division at executive level, communicating strategy, performance, risks, and investment cases, and contributing to enterprise-wide commercial decision-making. 

Qualifications: 

• 10+ years of leadership experience within the Sports, Sportswear, Outdoor, or Active Lifestyle industry, ideally in an executive Buying or commercial leadership role. 

• Significant experience in sports buying, merchandising, category management, or trading within an e-commerce or digital retail environment; off-price experience is a strong plus. 

• Strong understanding of sports and outdoor market dynamics, consumer trends, seasonal buying cycles, product innovation, and digital consumer behavior. 

• Proven track record of driving commercial performance in e-commerce using KPIs, trading insights, assortment optimization, and performance analytics. 

• Established network and experience managing and growing relationships with sports, outdoor, athletic footwear, and activewear brands and wholesale partners. 

• Strong negotiation skills with a history of delivering successful commercial outcomes in complex, high-volume brand environments. 

• Demonstrated leadership capability with experience building, coaching, developing teams, and driving performance through others. 

• Entrepreneurial, analytical, and results-oriented mindset with the visionary judgment and autonomy to navigate ambiguity and make bold, high-impact decisions; excellent stakeholder management skills; fluent in business English and willing to travel.