Project Manager Retail Expansion

Ace & Tate was founded to meet the need for affordable, high quality and beautiful spectacles. CEO and cofounder Mark de Lange wondered why he had 30 pairs of sneakers in his closet, but only one pair of glasses. Even though glasses are the most “in your face” apparel there is.

Focus on service

Ace & Tate launches a new collection of high quality and trendy glasses every season. The price is only € 98, regardless of the lenses. Providing a good service is very important to a young start-up. Customers can order the glasses online and try them out at home, or they can buy them in a store. There are four stores in the Netherlands and Ace & Tate regularly experiments with pop-up stores (for instance in Rotterdam). The company also opened a flagship store in Berlin. Next to all of the aforementioned, new stores will open their doors in Antwerp and Munich soon. Every Ace & Tate store is unique. The ambiance in the store needs to match a city’s character, without detracting from the brand’s identity. Ace & Tate wants to be sure that the store is opened at just the right location. You will not find them in the main shopping mall, but on characteristic streets in the city center – that difference is what Ace & Tate feels is the core of their brand. “The strong focus on maintaining our brand identity is an important part of our success”, says Mark de Lange.

Ace & Tate is growing rapidly

You might even say it’s growing exponentially. There is literally someone working at Ace & Tate that makes sure that the customers will not find the store’s door closed in front of them. Doortje van der Lee works for Ace & Tate as Retail Expansion Lead and is responsible for opening new stores. The aim is to open another twenty stores in Europe before 2017. The aim is to perhaps one day cross the Atlantic. The Retail Expansion Team led by Doortje van der Lee currently consists of a Retail Design Manager that makes sure that the look and feel of Ace & Tate remains safeguarded on the work floor. A Retail Developer Manager will start in October 2016, and the team will be supported by an Intern. Due to the ongoing growth in the number of stores, the teams keeps expanding. There is currently an opening for an experienced Project Manager Retail Expansion in Van der Lee’s team.

Vacancy: Project Manager Retail Expansion

The essence of this position is: successfully opening new stores. Van der Lee will provide the initial plans for opening a new store. When the decision to open a new store is taken, the Project Manager Retail Expansion takes over. The Project Manager Retail Expansions gets the keys for the new store, deals with the subcontractors, analyzes the contracts, tastes the atmosphere of a city, manages the Designer at the head office in Amsterdam who is working on the concept design, manages the budgets, follows up with the subcontractors, asks the Designer whether that expensive paint is really necessary, checks the budget one more time, sees that there still is budget for that one work of art, makes sure that the artwork is delivered that very next day, calls the PR-agency about the opening of the store, takes care of catering and last but not least: drinks a glass of champagne when celebrating the successful opening of a new store. The exciting part of this function is that everything is still in it’s infancy. Doortje van Lee:

“We want to do a lot and we will make sure it gets done. But lets’ be honest, at the moment we only have five stores. Therefore we do not yet have best practices. The Project Manger Retail Expansion will be working on these, structuring the processes and make sure that we are able to scale up. Without losing sight of what’s going on in the real world.”

The Project Manager will spend around half of their time on the road and at the new location, to make sure that all preparation required for opening stores in Europe gets done. This requires a lot of knowledge of the local market and close cooperation with partners who will be vital in the process of opening a new store (subcontractors, designers, artists, agencies, etc.). If Ace & Tate aims to open a store in Stockholm then the first person visiting Sweden on behalf of the company, will be the Project Manager Retail Expansion. They will be spending a lot of time in the target city. What is the right location for opening a new store? Who are the right local partners and suppliers? The Project Manager Retail Expansion is involved from start to finish and end-responsible for the entire process.