Store Format Strategy Manager

Apply on JLP Jobs - the official careers website for John Lewis Partnership, John Lewis & Partners, and Waitrose & Partners.

Salary: £52,800 - £84,300 - Please note from 1st April 2025, the salary range for this role will start from £56,000 and will follow the secondment policy (see further details below).

Contract type: This position is a Secondment until the end of November 2025.

Working pattern/flexible working: The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. The Store Format team aims for around 1-2 days a week in the office to connect (core days are Mondays) and on a more ad-hoc basis to attend key meetings.

Location: This role is based at our London Head Office campus in Pimlico. Please note, any cost incurred as a result of travel to the office is the responsibility of the successful candidate. There is no travel allowance for this role. There is also a responsibility to visit our John Lewis branches when necessary. You will be able to claim travel expenses for these journeys.

Key Responsibilities

1. Lead the creation and development of the overall Store Experience strategy, refreshing annually in line with the business planning timeline. The strategy must consider vision for our shops, architecture, shopfit design, space, customer amenities, services, hospitality and other commercial propositions.
2. Regularly exploring best-in-class benchmarking and working with external agencies where needed to define and set the overall Brand ambition for store experience.
3. Ensure affordability and financial viability lenses applied.
4. Work closely with the SME’s to identify shop solutions that step-change customer experience and profitability.
5. Develop a programme of work for large-scale format initiatives and in-store propositions that ladder up to the business and store experience strategy, and business plan.
6. On behalf of Brand & Store Experience, lead the strategic development of large scale initiatives. Developing high level project plans, timelines, and budgets to enable Stage Gate 1 papers and consulting on SG2 / project mobilisation hand off to Store Development Manager.
7. Lead the development of shop elements through Discovery, Ideation and Define phases to create Development Briefs aligned to the business strategy and aspiration.
8. Establish robust measures of success for major intervention projects, ensuring all stakeholders are aligned to the ambition and scope and any conflicting aspirations / priorities are resolved in a timely manner.
9. Business case development - creating business cases for new initiatives, assessment of their potential impact & feasibility, and ensuring consistent measurement of benefits.
10. For relevant projects, lead the measurement of benefits and Review & Recommend process.
11. Ensure learnings from competitors across the world are brought into new opportunities to consistently and constantly improve the customer experience and business profitability.
12. Using data and insight to support all experience and format strategy work.
13. Ensure all Discovery activity puts the Customer at the heart of all shop and store format briefs.

Essential Skills/Experience

1. Expertise in developing customer Experience and format strategies.
2. Data analysis & interpretation, actionable insight and recommendation.
3. Commercial and financial acumen.
4. Thought leadership.
5. Stakeholder Management, influencing, presenting.
6. Project Management.
7. Innovation, creative thinking.

Desirable Skills/Experience

1. Shop operations understanding.
2. Innovation, creative thinking.
3. Trading or Business Development experience.
4. Project Management.
5. Familiar with business intelligence tools.
6. Strategic workforce planning; analysis; resource management.

Have you got a passion for physical retail, customer experience and a broad understanding of how shops work?

Are you comfortable with numbers but also able to paint a strategic picture?

Do you like simplifying and solving complex problems whilst cutting through ambiguity?

Want to help shape and create what John Lewis shops look like in the future to drive long-term profitability?

Then this could be the opportunity you’ve been looking for!

As the Store Format Strategy Manager, you will be responsible for developing the overall strategy for John Lewis shops.

Collaborating closely with Commercial, Property, Retail and Strategy (to name a few), you will define the medium-to-long-term store experience strategy. You will explore and identify key innovation opportunities to create a vision and roadmap for our stores, propositions and customer experience.

You will feed into the capital plan to create a pipeline of investment in shops, driving profitability and reducing operational debt to achieve sustainable, long-term growth for our physical estate.

You will work cross-functionally, leading the early-stage brief development for new and existing shop opportunities on behalf of the brand, aligning these briefs to the store experience strategy and Business Plan.

You will support the Store Strategy & Development Lead in making priority decisions and coordinating/programming portfolio projects.

Typically 9am-5pm M-F