Fashion Retail Concept Design Manager

Company Description

Join our team to achieve your full career potential! We are proactive, outside the box thinkers and doers who stop at nothing to make the iconic Laura and Melanie Lyne brands shine! Privately owned and based in Laval, Quebec, with a strong vision for innovation and optimizing the employee and client experiences, we continue to help generations of Canadian women to look and feel their best.

Job Description

The Fashion Retail Design Concept Manager will lead the creative and functional direction for all store designs across both brands. This role is pivotal in ensuring that all new builds and renovations align with brand identity, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and meet operational needs. The position requires a blend of creative leadership, strategic oversight, and project management, working closely with the Senior Project Manager and cross-functional teams to bring store concepts to life.

How you will support the team:

• Creative Leadership:
  • Defines and maintains store design standards for both brands.
  • Leads the development of all store design projects and ensures alignment with brand aesthetics.
  • Presents design ideas to internal stakeholders and secures approvals for layouts, finishes, and fixtures.
    
     
• Functional Oversight:
  • Collaborates with internal teams, including Store Operations, Visual Presentation, Merchandise Design, and Planning & Allocation, to ensure designs meet operational requirements.
  • Optimizes layouts for fitting rooms, product adjacencies, cash areas, and back-of-house efficiency.
  • Ensures layouts and fixtures accommodate seasonal inventory changes and maximize customer flow.
  • Acts as the primary liaison with external design firm and Senior Store Design Drafter.
  • Researches retail design trends and competitor environments to keep designs innovative and customer-focused.

• Team Management
  • Leads, mentors and develops the design team, fostering a culture of creativity and excellence.
  • Ensures design team prioritizes work and meets all the timelines provided by the Senior Project Manager.

Qualifications

Those who thrive with us have:

• Strong creative vision with a solid understanding of technical and operational requirements
• 7+ years of retail design, interior design or architecture experience, including team management responsibility
• Proficiency in design software (e.g. AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp) is an asset.
• Strong project management and collaboration skills
• Ability to balance aesthetic vision with operational functionality
• Knowledge of current retail design trends and consumer behaviour
• Strong communication skills - ability to articulate vision and strategy to internal and external partners

Additional Information

Laura Canada is a family-owned retailer housing two iconic women’s fashion apparel brands, Laura and Melanie Lyne. Based in Laval, Quebec, we design, produce, market and sell our fashion collections across Canada. We proudly employ over 2,000 dedicated team members and operate more than 140 retail store locations as well as operating laura.ca and melanielyne.com. We attribute our success to the unwavering commitment of our teams to delivering outstanding customer experiences while embodying our shared values of integrity, respect, teamwork, performance, and passion. We believe that delivering an outstanding customer experience is driven by our commitment to an outstanding employee experience.