Department Manager, Designer Footwear

An iconic London department store

The opportunity

One of London's great department stores retained us to find, meet and hire the person who will run its designer footwear floor. A house on that street is a landmark before it is a shop — people come from everywhere to walk through those doors, and the shoe floor is where a lot of them end up.

This is a portfolio job. You take a group of designer shoe brands under one roof and you make them work — each with its own house team, its own launches, its own idea of how its shoes should be sold. Your floor sits between all of them. The store asked us for someone who has sold at this level and then led people doing it: five to seven years in luxury retail, with real time on the floor before the title. They want a manager who is still a seller — someone clients ask for by name, and who the brand partners trust with their season.

What you will be responsible for

• You run the floor day to day, and you are on it — this is not an office job with a shop attached
• You lead the team: the schedule, the coaching, the standards, the difficult conversation when it is needed
• You hold the numbers for the whole portfolio, brand by brand, and you know why each one is where it is
• You are the store's face to the brand partners — launches, training, stock conversations, the seasonal push
• You sell. You keep your own clients and you show the team what good looks like by doing it
• You watch the floor itself: sizes, runs, replenishment, how the product sits, what the customer sees first

What we are looking for

• Five to seven years in luxury retail, with management time that came after real selling years
• You have worked with footwear, or with a portfolio of brands under one roof — either teaches the same instinct
• Comfortable with brand partners: you can hold a commercial conversation and still keep the relationship warm
• You read a sales report properly and you can say what you will do about it
• London hours, London weekends, London Christmas — you know what that means

What the opportunity offers

• £39,000–£45,000, with a generous bonus, plus a shoe allowance — the store wants you wearing the floor
• A portfolio of designer names in one of the most visited luxury doors in Europe, and the brand relationships that come with it
• You talk to us, not a portal — we meet you, we interview you, and when it fits we introduce you to the store ourselves, confidentially. Skip the formal cover letter: three lines on the best pair of shoes you ever sold, and why, will do more