Digital Director in Rochdale

Description

Footasylum is a leading UK-based retailer specialising in streetwear and sportswear, committed to delivering innovative and trend-setting products to our customers, with a strong focus on digital transformation and data-driven decision-making.

The Role

Footasylum is entering the next phase of its digital development.

Our ambition is to evolve from a predominantly traffic-led ecommerce business into a customer- and community-led commerce ecosystem, combining profitable ecommerce growth, social commerce, creator-led discovery, personalised customer journeys and a scalable data and technology foundation.

We are looking for a Digital Director to lead this transformation.

The role will be the single accountable owner of Footasylum’s digital commercial strategy, ecommerce performance and cross-functional digital roadmap.

You will lead the Ecommerce and Digital Product, CRO and Customer Experience functions and act as the senior digital partner to Brand, Merchandising, Product, BI and Technology.

The Digital Director will establish a repeatable model for profitable growth in the UK and internationally while building new capabilities across social commerce, customer data, personalisation, measurement and digital product development.

About You

You are a commercially minded digital leader who combines strategic ambition with strong operational depth.

You have experience building and scaling digital businesses, leading transformation and challenging established ways of working.

You understand how customer insight, ecommerce, marketing, data and technology must work together to create profitable growth.

You are equally comfortable discussing ecommerce performance, customer propositions, digital product priorities, attribution and organisational capability with both functional teams and executive stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Digital Strategy, P&L & Business Growth
• Own and execute Footasylum’s UK digital strategy and establish a scalable model for international growth.
• Own digital revenue, gross profit and contribution performance, balancing acquisition, retention, conversion, returns, discount dependency and long-term customer value.
• Translate Footasylum’s ambition to move from a webshop to a customer- and community-led commerce ecosystem.
• Build annual and seasonal trading, investment and growth plans aligned with the wider commercial strategy.
• Identify and prioritise new markets, channels, technologies and partnerships based on clear business cases and incremental profit potential.
• Ecommerce, Digital Product & Customer Experience
• Own ecommerce performance and trading execution across revenue, gross profit, conversion, AOV, returns, product availability and sell-through.
• Lead the digital product roadmap across the website, app and other customer-facing digital experiences.
• Drive continuous improvement across product discovery, navigation, onsite search, checkout, site speed, personalisation and conversion.
• Establish a structured experimentation programme using customer insight, behavioural data and robust test design.
• Partner with Merchandising, Product and Operations to align customer demand, product availability, promotional activity and digital presentation.
• Ensure Footasylum delivers a fast, simple, mobile-first and trustworthy experience for both its young consumer audience and the customer completing the purchase.
• Digital Marketing, CRM & Audience Growth
• Develop an integrated acquisition, retention and engagement strategy across Paid Search, Paid Social, SEO, Affiliates, CRM and emerging digital channels.
• Build a differentiated audience strategy that recognises the needs and behaviours of Footasylum’s young consumers as well as the customers – including parents and family members – who complete the purchase.
• Accelerate CRM, loyalty and lifecycle marketing through stronger segmentation, behavioural triggers, personalisation and customer-value management.
• Build Tik Tok Shop and wider social commerce into scalable, commercially managed channels with clear ownership across content, creators, catalogue, operations and measurement.
• Partner with Brand and Creative to connect brand storytelling, community, creators and performance activity around shared audience and commercial objectives
• Data, Measurement & Personalisation
• Establish a unified measurement framework covering commercial performance, customer value, attribution, marketing mix modelling and incrementality.
• Partner with BI and Finance to create a consistent view of revenue, gross profit, contribution, acquisition cost and lifetime value by channel, audience and market.
• Improve the quality, accessibility and activation of first-party customer and behavioural data across ecommerce, CRM, paid media and personalisation.

Use experimentation and customer insights to optimise marketing investment, digital journeys and personalisation, ensuring decisions are based on profitable incremental growth rather than platform-reported return alone.

• Technology, Platform & Digital Transformation
• Partner with Technology to define and deliver a scalable digital platform roadmap aligned with customer and commercial priorities.
• Lead the business evaluation, prioritisation and delivery of major digital initiatives, including potential re-platforming.
• Ensure that product data, customer identity, platform integrations and digital infrastructure support personalisation, social commerce and international growth.
• Evaluate AI, automation, agentic commerce and emerging technologies against clear customer use cases, commercial value and implementation requirements.
• Leadership & Cross-functional Delivery
• Lead, coach and develop the senior leaders responsible for Ecommerce and Digital Product, CRO/UX and the webshop, creating clear accountability across the wider digital organisation.
• Establish shared objectives, KPIs, decision rights and operating rhythms across digital functions.
• Act as Footasylum’s senior digital spokesperson and decision partner across Brand, Merchandising, Product, BI, Technology, Retail, Operations and Finance.
• Build a customer-centred, commercially accountable culture that challenges legacy thinking and moves the organisation beyond one-size-fits-all approaches.

Skills / Experience

• Extensive senior leadership experience across digital commerce, ecommerce, customer growth or digital transformation within a scaled consumer business.
• Experience owning a material ecommerce P&L and multi-million-pound digital marketing investment.
• A proven record of delivering profitable digital growth across revenue, gross profit, contribution and customer value.
• Demonstrable experience leading significant digital transformation, such as re-platforming, digital product development, customer-data transformation or a major change in operating model.
• Strong understanding of attribution, marketing mix modelling, incrementality, experimentation and performance measurement.
• Experience using CRM, customer data, segmentation and personalisation to improve acquisition, retention and lifetime value.
• Proven experience of profitably scaling ecommerce across multiple international markets.
• Experience taking at least one new digital channel, market or proposition from initial test to scaled operation.
• Strong leadership experience across senior, multidisciplinary teams and complex cross-functional stakeholder groups.

Why Footasylum?

We are one of the leading omni-channel retailers across the UK, but more than that we are a brilliant place to work.

We value you and your development.

We have loads of examples of people moving upwards, across to other departments and given training to excel their personal and professional skills.

Our aim is to create a fun environment, where your success is paramount to ours and you are given the right tools, support, and platform to achieve your goals.

Diversity

We recognise and value the importance of diversity to help make sure we have lots of different perspectives when we are building services to customers and the wider business.

This is great news for our business.

Diversity for us is also, importantly, about building happy teams full of people that want to learn and want to be inspired by each other and our different experiences and backgrounds.

Recruitment Process

We review applications on an individual basis, and if we feel you would be a good fit we'll invite you for a call or Teams video for an informal chat about the role, and to see if we're a good fit for you.

We value open and honest conversations and collaboration, giving you a chance to learn about what we are doing in an informal and friendly environment.

Please note, this role will be based at our Head Office in Greater Manchester and will require regular attendance in line with our hybrid working model.