Barry James Email & Phone Number

New York, New York, United States

Leverage the talent of a team of 16 across visual merchandising, shopper marketing, education, and operations, overseeing all commercial and marketing activities in-store across multiple brands and retailers. Align and manage an annual team budget, ensuring all activations meet company objectives and achieve a positive ROI.Leadership/Strategic Visioning: » Own the overall team strategy, aligning it with company and retailer objectives. Develop top-level plans and detailed day-to-day activities, while reporting deliverables to senior stakeholders.» Drive people management and career development strategies, empowering the team through individual and group discussions, coaching, and career path frameworks.» Oversee creative direction for all instore materials to drive an on-brand, consistent delivery across all retail touchpoints and professional brand execution.Highlights/Achievements: » Formed a new Commercial Execution department, bringing together 4 separate teams to deliver a seamless in-store experience for the customer. Supported the team throughout with short and long-range team strategy, clear roles and responsibilities, and career development plans.» Led a key retailer flagship store program to overcome footfall decline by delivering custom displays, marketing and education materials into stores, driving an increase in sales.» Boosted sales in underperforming retailers through enhanced product assortment, innovation, and merchandising.» Developed and executed the Winning Culture annual plan with a cross-functional team, boosting employee engagement by 5%.

New York, New York, United States

Developed a center of excellence to execute the visual merchandising strategy and manage creative services for the wider organization. Led project management, and operations function to drive best in class execution of displays across retailers.Leadership/Strategic Visioning: » Directed the design and execution of branded displays and visual merchandising solutions across multiple retailers, ensuring brand consistency while reducing cost and complexity.Key Achievements/Highlights:» Developed new systems to streamline visual merchandising and creative processes, involving stakeholders throughout; delivered masterclasses to integrate these changes into daily operations.» Originated the company corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, ensuring all vendors adhered to our goals of recyclability and renewal resource management.» Streamlined the vendor management process, cutting costs and complexity, driving innovation, and aligning company strategy.

New York, New York, United States

Executed the store environment strategy for multiple beauty brands in North American retailers (over 18,000 doors), ensuring alignment to brand vision and company mission and goals.Key Achievements/Highlights:» Collaborated with vendors to design and implement branded fixtures in Walgreens stores, enhancing the Walgreens-Boots partnership, introducing UK beauty brands to the USA and boosting sales by up to 35%.

Lead the store and brand environment function for Boots International across all formats, brands and countries to drive the global ambition of Alliance Boots.Key Achievements/Highlights:» Led the global relaunch of No7 skincare and cosmetics across international markets. Executed brand design, space planning, merchandising, manufacturing, and implementation within budget.» Judged the POPAI Industry Awards for the UK & Ireland and the International POP Awards.

Nottingham, United Kingdom

Co-ordinated environment projects to aid the global expansion of Boots International & Alliance Healthcare, ensuring cost effective and timely delivery for each project

Nottingham, United Kingdom

Responsible for the development and delivery of the retail and implant in-store environment for Boots brands and exclusives in North America, Europe and Asia

Stamford, Connecticut, Usa

Managed environment aspects for the 2007 Boots USA rollout; Circa 3,000 branded implants in Target and CVS stores in the USA and Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada

Nottingham, United Kingdom

Bachelor Of Arts (Ba), Management Of Design & Innovation

Foundation Degree, Art & Design