HEAD HUNTING OF EXECUTIVE TALENT FOR

Position Profile
Head of Global Sourcing,
Greater Africa
(DECEMBER 13TH 2022)
Our Company
The Children’s Place is the largest pure-play children’s specialty apparel retailer in North America. The Company
designs, contracts to manufacture, sells at retail and wholesale, and licenses to sell fashionable, high-quality
merchandise predominantly at value prices, primarily under the proprietary “The Children’s Place”, “Place”,
“Baby Place”, “Gymboree”, “Sugar & Jade” and “PJ Place” brand names. The Company has online stores
at www.childrensplace.com, www.gymboree.com, www.sugarandjade.com and www.pjplace.com and, as of
October 29, 2022, the Company had 658 stores in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico and the
Company’s five international franchise partners had 213 international points of distribution in 16 countries.

As part of our continued growth efforts, The Children’s Place is seeking a respected leader to continue driving
and leading the growth of our Greater Africa sourcing business as Head of Global Sourcing, Greater Africa.

The Role
This role is responsible for accomplishing and leading the Global Sourcing business in Greater Africa and reports
into the Vice President, Global Sourcing (International) based at our Hong Kong office. The role will build and
establish our merchandising/sourcing presence in the region by developing new vendor partnerships and
discovering new viable factories to produce our range of products – and ultimately ensure that we deliver a
best-in-class product for our consumers at the right price and speed of delivery. This role will also partner with
cross-functional leadership in Product Quality and Responsible Sourcing to support regional efforts in these
interconnected areas of business for the organization. This role will be responsible for leading, developing and
retaining a team of merchandising associates to manage our increasingly growing production in the region with
the support of two direct reports at the manager-level – one Merchandising Manager in Kenya and another in
Ethiopia.

Key Accountabilities:

Global Sourcing Strategy – Development & Operationalization:

- Pioneer new Global Sourcing business relationships across Greater Africa

- Develop and support the implementation of new global sourcing strategies and initiatives for the region
to create a competitive advantage for TCP
- Build and establish a merchandising/sourcing presence in the region to improve the organization’s
supply chain reliability
- Draw linkages and create opportunities for greater collaboration and organizational alignment across all
divisions of the global Product Quality and Sourcing/Merchandising functions
- Support the factory self-certification programs, ensuring all production regions have plans in place to
shift capable factories over to certified status and achieve yearly targets for volumes shipped from
certified “Low Maintenance” Suppliers
- Plan, coordinate, participate and/or support the organization with delivering large-scale events and
conferences, such as regular Sourcing, and/or Vendor Summits
- Develop and deliver relevant training to internal and external stakeholders to realize/operationalize new
strategies, programs, and protocol

Product Vendor Development

- Identify, engage and cultivate new and existing vendor relationships

- Coordinate, guide and support vendor assessments through the start-up process.
 - Oversee & coordinate the vendor on-boarding process

Africa Government Relations

- Represent TCP when engaging government officials and representatives in region such as:
➢ US Embassy
➢ In-region ministries
➢ USAID
- Maintain and nurture government relations
- Manage TCP application for Aid grants

Field Quality Assurance

- Partner with the Director, Product Quality and provide local support to the Field QA teams across
Greater Africa in achieving an overall effective execution of all quality management programs and
initiatives for TCP regionally
- Support the Director, Product Quality to consolidate, review, and present Field QA data and trends to
senior management while proposing recommendations for continuous improvement

Philanthropy

- Manage and oversee TCP partnerships Child Care Development Centers (Plan International)
- Manage adherence to operational program guidelines
- Identify potential new locations

Business Analytics:

- Continuously monitor workload across all manufacturing locations regionally, particularly in conjunction
with major shifts in the Company’s sourcing footprint; provide the VP, Global Sourcing (International)
with resource plans per region and recommendations for continuous “right sizing” of the quality and
merchandising functions
- Use relevant data to support the development of tailored factory improvement plans to elevate factory
performance and thus product quality across all locations
- Work with relevant business partners in Global Sourcing and Sourcing Operations in maintaining the
Vendor Scorecard process

Education, Experience, and Leadership Standards:

- Diploma/Degree in a related and appropriate field (such as fashion technology or garment

manufacturing)
- Minimum of ten years’ progressive, increasingly responsible experience in global sourcing, product
quality, QA, QC, operations, or similar
- Ability to network, build professional relationships, and influence at all levels within the organization,
external partners and service providers
- Possess a strong global sourcing, manufacturing, product quality background specific to Greater Africa
 - Comprehensive merchandising/sourcing background in both Pre-Production and Production
management for apparel and non-apparel products, children’s products preferred
- Previous experience working across different countries and cultures preferred
- Excellent communication and presentation skills with strong command of verbal and written English
- Proven knowledge of data analyses and sourcing business operational flow; exposure to Global Sourcing
metrics and analytics
- Strong capability in Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)
- Demonstrated prior experience developing, communicating, and maintaining Vendor Scorecards

Behavioural Competencies:

- Drives Business Results through Communication and Collaboration

- Plans and Organizes
- Exhibits and Drives Accountability
- Builds Effective Teams

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