Director of Retail Transformation — Interim, Department Stores

The mandate

Ten redesigned stores increased capital and payroll without lifting conversion or basket enough to cover occupancy. The rollout proposal extrapolated opening-week traffic rather than mature cohort economics.

The interim must begin within four weeks for a fixed twelve-month test-and-decision cycle. The temporary office closes after the board decides scale, modify or stop and line functions accept the chosen model.

Handover requires six-month cohort contribution above the approved hurdle in revised pilots, capital payback supported by observed data, an accepted store playbook, and Retail Operations independently opening two sites to standard.

The director may alter pilot layout, labour and service design within ₹75 lakh per store. National rollout, lease commitment and format capital above ₹5 crore require investment approval; Merchandising owns assortment and Pricing owns consumer price.

E-commerce platform replacement, loyalty redesign and supply-chain network changes are excluded. The assignment tests the physical format and the operating choices necessary for investable rollout.

Why this seat is open

The pilot produced attractive design but not acceptable economics. Continuing under the same sponsorship would risk scaling unverified assumptions. A finite transformation director will run honest cohorts and close the programme into a clear board decision.

What you will own

• Reconstruct pilot cohorts across traffic, conversion, basket, margin, labour, occupancy and capital.
• Decide which layout, service and labour hypotheses merit controlled retest.
• Establish matched-store and mature-cohort measures before claiming incremental performance.
• Redesign the pilot playbook with explicit format, city, catchment and property constraints.
• Run revised sites through opening, stabilisation and six-month contribution gates.
• Present scale, modify and stop cases with capital payback and downside sensitivities.
• Transfer the accepted model through two line-led store openings and close the transformation office.

Candidate qualifications

• Eighteen-plus years in large-format, department-store or specialty retail operations and transformation.
• Designed or recovered a store format using mature cohort and matched-store economics.
• Strong grasp of conversion, basket, gross margin, labour, occupancy and capital-payback interactions.
• Experience stopping or modifying a visually successful pilot that failed investment thresholds.
• Ability to run controlled physical-retail tests despite merchandising and property variation.
• Demonstrated transfer of format rollout from a programme office to line retail operations.