Knitwear Designer

Purpose of the job:

To steer the creative effort in executing end-to-end design activities for a brand / category while ensuring alignment with brand, customer and profitability requirements.

Role & Responsibilities:
• Understands the Brand's direction and overall growth plans; conducts competition analysis from a design perspective and research on industry forecasts / trends, etc.
• Conduct primary & secondary research on fashion & lifestyle trends.
• Consolidates research inputs along with fashion insights from the creative head, to finalize the design theme for a season.
• Work on design matrix for the season, in line with the product team's option brief, MRP guidelines as well as customer / buyer inputs.
• Exploring the design parameters such as color, fabric, fit and patterns to create the season's collection.
• Design and create original and innovative designs & graphics using softwares such as Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Ensures timely preparation of dockets and proto-sample approvals with design comments, if any and facilitates design handover to Product teams.
• Ensures timely preparation of dockets and proto-sample approvals with design comments, if any and facilitates design handover to Product teams.
• Works with Marketing and Visual Merchandizing teams to provide creative inputs on packaging and communicate season story, new initiatives, etc.; supports display and planning for the road-show.
• On season launch, supports the sales team / channels on consistent look & feel across stores; provides design related inputs on selling tools such as product display, VM, marketing support and front-end training as required;
• Participates in monthly reviews with the product managers and buying team to implement any course corrections required based on sell-through analysis. Use the customer / consumer insights to assess performance of designs in various channels and feed back into the next design cycle.

Person Profile:
• Desired Qualification: NIFT or equivalent certification in apparel / fashion designing / knitwear designing
• Desired Experience Profile: 8- 10 years of apparel knitwear design experience preferably in a similar brand or retail format