Design Director, Apparel - US Sports

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization

• Develop and direct industry leading creative solutions for concepts and categories, to create a highly relevant, desirable and clear adidas brand image, from sellin to sellout (consumer-facing)
• Lead and manage the internal creative team to achieve worldclass results

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the Creative development for multiple concepts or categories across multiple consumer touchpoints, from 2D to retail to digital
• Develop concepts and creative strategies that fulfill objectives of category, concept, brief
• Collaborate with Product Design team to ensure holistic storytelling
• Collaborate with cross-functional team members to ensure consumer- and brand focus
• Set priorities, creative and assignment-related, of team
• Lead the execution of creative strategies to ensure end to end creative excellence, from sellin to sellout (consumer-facing)
• Direct variety of creative resources (agencies, freelancers, writers, photographers, etc) on creative execution to ensure holistic creative excellence
• Review and approve production stages of creative execution
• Maximise results within given budget and timeframes
• Participate in creation of annual and long-term Creative Direction strategies
• Present and communicate creative solutions with clarity, effectively selling in ideas to variety of stakeholders
• Identify opportunities of improvement and change, and initiate own proposals/projects
• Seek out new Design resources that can deliver world class results

Key Relationships

• Design Directors, Creative Directors
• Product Designers
• Brand Communications
• Retail, C2C
• Product Teams
• External Agencies and Art/Creative Directors
• External Creative Resources

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• IT skills: Excel, Word, PowerPoint: advanced /Outlook
• Design apps: expert
• Strong visual and verbal skills with the ability to create impactful/exciting visuals
• Language: English: excellent -- Another European language: fluent

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications

• Undergraduate level Design education or combination thereof
• Solid education and advanced experience in the creative development of communication tools
• At least 10 years experience in Sporting Goods/Fashion Industry or Design on managerial level
• 3 years personnel management experience
• Proven experience with the entire design process (project scope and time planning, design steps, production/execution of design solution, pre-press processes)
• Passion for adidas and its mission
• Passion for sports, culture, design
• adidas celebrates diversity, supports inclusiveness and encourages individual expression in our workplace. We do not tolerate the harassment or discrimination toward any of our applicants or employees. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.
• adidas offers robust and progressive medical, including HSA (Health Savings Account) with employer funding or FSA (Flexible Spending Account) options, dental, vision, prescription drug coverage, adoption, with surrogate and fertility support, short and long-term disability, and basic life and AD&D insurance, which can be supplemented with employee-paid coverage. Employees are able to enroll in adidas' 401k plan and Stock Purchase Plan with employer match. Full-time employees are eligible for education assistance and generous Leave policies including 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Employees are eligible to earn an annual bonus based on both company and personal performance. Employees accrue prorated flexible time off in the amount .4388 hours per day that increases with years of service, twelve paid holidays throughout the calendar year and Service Time Off during milestone years.
• At adidas we offer a Hybrid work policy which requires attendance in the office Monday through Thursday, with the flexibility to work remotely on Friday each week. For work requiring a high degree of collaboration or an in-person presentation, in-office attendance is required even on Friday. The working location of this position is Portland, Oregon.
• Though our teammates hail from all corners of the world, our working language is English.