The Executive Creative Director (ECD) serves as the creative visionary and strategic leader for design initiatives across the organization. This role requires a rare combination of retail experience expertise, design talent, and construction literacy. You will bridge the gap between creative vision and built reality - leading teams to deliver transformative retail environments that are both inspiring and executable.
The ECD is also responsible for installing a repeatable creative operating rhythm that improves outcomes: stronger briefs, faster approvals, less rework, healthier margins, and more confident clients. This is not a traditional creative director role - it is creative leadership with operational discipline.
Responsibilities:
- Design breathtaking retail experiences that stop customers in their tracks - and still make it through value engineering without losing the soul.
- Understand P&Ls, square-foot economics, proforma logic, and retail operational requirements (flow, merchandising, labor, throughput).
- Speak fluently about millwork details, MEP coordination, building codes, documentation, and construction sequencing - you have been in the field and know what happens there.
- Translate between the languages of brand strategy, design excellence, and construction reality - and align stakeholders from CMO to CFO to GC.
- Build a creative operating system (not just great work): standards, critique, stage gates, and metrics that scale quality across teams.
Core competencies:
- Visionary creative thinking balanced with pragmatic business sense and construction realities.
- Ability to translate complex business challenges into elegant, executable design solutions.
- Fluency across creative, retail, and technical languages; strong cross-functional collaboration.
- Strong leadership presence and executive communication skills; comfortable with merchants, strategists, CFOs, and contractors alike.
- Comfort with ambiguity and ability to thrive in a fast-paced consulting environment.
- A systems mindset: builds repeatable standards and processes that improve outcomes beyond any single project.
- Problem-solver who sees constraints as creative opportunities, not obstacles.
- Key responsibilities
- Creative vision, standards, and storytelling
- Creative operating system (COS) and delivery discipline
- Retail strategy, economics, and client outcomes
- Design development and construction integration
- Executive client leadership and stakeholder management
- Growth, thought leadership, and market differentiation
- Team leadership, talent development, and studio health
Qualifications:
- 12+ years of experience in retail design, branded environments, retail architecture, or experience design.
- 5+ years in senior creative leadership roles, with demonstrated ability to lead leaders (ACD/CD level) and multidisciplinary teams.
- Deep retail fluency: store planning, customer journey, merchandising strategies, retail operations, and the economics that drive decision-making.
- Construction literacy: working knowledge of architectural systems, construction documentation, materials, codes, and field execution; experience collaborating through CA/field realities.
- Proven record of design excellence - a portfolio that shows strategic thinking, design innovation, and executed built work.
- Executive communication skills: confident presenting to C-suite stakeholders across creative, operations, real estate, and finance.
- Business literacy: comfortable with metrics and partnering with finance/ops to improve utilization, margin, and delivery performance.
- Bachelor's degree in Design, Architecture, Interior Design, or related field (or equivalent experience).
Preferred:
- Registered Architect or Interior Designer.
- Experience in consulting or professional services environments.
- Direct retail industry experience (client-side or deeply embedded with retail clients).
- Knowledge of retail real estate development processes, fundamentals, and economics.
- Familiarity with emerging retail trends, omnichannel strategies, and experiential design.
- Master's degree in Design, Architecture, Business, or related field.
