Head of Online Channels

For many people, going outdoors starts online. A.S. Adventure is the European market leader in high-quality outdoor clothing and reliable gear for mountain biking, camping, skiing, and many other outdoor activities. They are currently developing the organizational structure to leverage their scale. Online marketing forms an excellent opportunity for more international synergy. This gives rise to a new leadership position at group-level: Head of Online Channels.

About A.S. Adventure Group

With a total of over 250 stores throughout Europe, 4000 employees and an annual turnover of 650 million euros, A.S. Adventure Group is Europe’s largest omnichannel retailer for outdoor clothing and necessities. The group is not just a market leader in their home country Belgium, but also in the Netherlands and the UK. In Belgium, France, and Luxembourg, A.S. Adventure is a household name. In the Netherlands, most consumers will know the company as Bever, which is known and praised for their successful omnichannel strategy. In the UK, A.S. Adventure Group operates as retail chains such as Costworld Outdoor, Snow + Rock, CycleSurgery and RunnersNeed, and the company recently entered the German market by acquiring McTrek Outdoor Sports.

This broad assortment of stores and brands enables A.S. Adventure to offer a broad range of products and services to its clients, which range from first-time campers to experienced outdoor athletes. A.S. Adventure Group strives to deliver the highest standards of service to every customer that enters their offline and online stores, which has shown to be their key to success. Especially online, the company has set high standards for the online shopping experience that translates into a significant and rapidly increasing online share. Something that is also confirmed by the numerous awards they have won: in The Netherlands, Bever has won the award for Best Webshop in the Outdoor Category in 2017-2018 and Google named Bever as the best omnichannel experience in Europe.

A.S. Adventure Group is currently developing its organizational structure to leverage its scale. Coming from an entirely country-specific setup, they now aim to balance their local and international responsibilities and activities. One of the low hanging fruits for international synergy is online marketing. This gives rise to a new leadership position at group-level: Head of Online Channels.

The vacancy: Head of Online Channels

This is a game-changing position within A.S. Adventure Group, setting up an organization across the countries to share best practices, tooling, and resources, ultimately creating a performance-driven center of excellence.

The goal is to optimize return on ad spending (ROAS) and maximize the share of unpaid and low-price traffic by SEO, loyalty-based and direct search. Striking the right balance between doing things locally/shared and in-house/outsourced requires a highly analytical and pragmatic approach to the business. The Head of Online Channels will also develop and coach the online marketing teams across the different chains, in order to create a true center of excellence with a culture of performance and learning.

“Realizing the highest quality at the lowest costs, that’s what success looks like. You’ll work closely together with the e-commerce, IT and UX teams to improve conversion. Increased ROAS means increased budgets – I’m challenging you to push our limits.” – Hidde J. van der Louw, CDO A.S. Adventure Group

The groundwork for this role has been laid. All countries already work with the same stack (Adobe Experience Manager, DoubleClick for search, AdChief, Google and Adobe Analytics, SEMrush, Searchmetrics, and Get-Stat). Shared KPI’s and a shared maturity model (country/brand assessment) have been developed and are about to be introduced. The Head of Online Channels will embed these further into the organization by developing a clear set of guidelines, a shared ecosystem with reporting, shared tooling and closer cooperation with the right agency.

Candidate Profile

• Relevant academic degree
• Minimum of 7 years of Online Marketing/Channel experience
• Working with international teams
• Extremely results-driven
• Analytical skills
• Authority and influencer skills

A.S. Adventure works with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.
Contact Marlies Hoogvliet at marlies@topofminds.com for more information.