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Senior Specialist - SMU Designer FTW

Location: Zurich

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Product Design

In short

This role will be rooted within our CMD SMU (Special Make-Up) design team, with a strong interdisciplinary collaboration alongside Product Design, Innovation, Color, Materials, and the respective Product Management team. You will be responsible for driving ON’s seasonal CMD SMU projects from a creative and strategic perspective, ensuring our collections are getting developed according to our future business needs while simultaneously weaving in the desires of our retail partners, distributors, and target markets. The spectrum of partnerships and coinciding product is vast and versatile in this role; requiring a sharp eye for modern trends, a significant global / cultural understanding, an open-mind aesthetically and a design practice that brings a unique perspective to the development of our collections. You navigate with ease in either macro or micro trend environments and have the ability to understand markets, regions and communities you will closely work with. Additionally, you are a strong technical team player who can evolve in an ever-changing, fast-paced environment that requires the balancing of hyper-creative tasks with administrative-design duties.

Your Mission

Focus on Collaboration: Focusing on both our account-focused and inline collections, you easily collaborate with multiple counterparts in different teams (Product Managers, Merchandisers, Developers, Strategizers, etc.)
Analyze Consumer Behavior: Analyze consumer behavior, market trends, and lifestyle shifts to identify opportunities for innovative color and material directions.
Translate Consumer Insights: Translate consumer insights into seasonal color / material stories, and design narratives that resonate with target audiences.
Monitor Global Trends: Monitor global fashion, sport, culture, and retail trends to anticipate emerging consumer preferences and influence future product strategies.
Balance Creativity and Commercial Viability: Use qualitative and quantitative insights to balance consumer desirability, brand identity, innovation, and commercial viability.
Present Design Recommendations: Present consumer-driven design recommendations supported by research, storytelling, and visual communication.
Champion a Consumer-First Mindset: Champion a consumer-first mindset throughout the product creation process, ensuring color and material decisions enhance both performance and emotional connection.
Design into Briefs: Designing into briefs, interpreting feedback, and creating whatever appropriate amount of ideations might suit the task, whilst showcasing how ideas can live within all ends of the spectrum; ranging from relevant-and-commercial to energetic-and-forward-thinking.
Communicate Design Decisions: Being able to verbally talk-through your ideas with a strong emphasis on WHY you followed certain paths and made specific design decisions.
Collaborate Across CMD: Collaborating closely with the greater CMD team on defining signature executions that will bond our head-to-toe collections together.
Drive Material Innovation: Proactively scouring the landscape for the latest print, material, finish and colouring technologies that will challenge our product, brand and industry.
Partner with R&D: In collaboration with our R&D material specialists, making sure that only materials which both fulfill all functionality and sustainability criteria are selected for projects you lead — all the while, pushing to establish what pinnacle expression through materilization could be for us in the future.
Own Projects: Owning projects from conversations and concepts all the way through to techpacks and final delivery, by collaborating hand-in-hand with both our Zurich based development team and overseas partners.
Strengthen Industry Knowledge: Increase our industry knowledge by attending key retailer sell-in meetings, tradeshows, brick-and-mortar stores, regional markets and partnering with our internal teams on consumer insights.
Support Development: Overseeing developmental duties including but not limited to color cad techpacks, material map creation, shell pattern alterations and graphic / artwork adjustments.

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Your story

Education & Experience: You have completed a Bachelor or Masters degree in Textile Design, Industrial / Product Design, Graphic Design or any other related field.
CMD Experience: You bring 5+ years of working experience in the CMD segment within the apparel, accessories, or footwear segment.
Portfolio: You bring a strong portfolio with proven experience working on everything ranging from engineered materials, trims, dyeing techniques to prints.
Industry Knowledge: You bring a great knowledge of key retailers within the lifestyle footwear landscape.
Operational Excellence: You have strong organizational skills, the ability to manage complex projects whilst sticking to critical timelines and deadlines - at the same time working on overlapping seasons and projects without losing or diluting the overview and vision.
Entrepreneurial Mindset: You have an entrepreneurial attitude, ambition and willingness to take on challenges.
Communication & Leadership: You are a strong communicator with proven experience presenting projects to a wider team of decision makers and adapting given the needs of different audiences.
Technical Proficiency: Excellent 2D software skills in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. Experience in rendering programs are a plus. - Fluent in English, written and spoken, any other language would be a plus.

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About the Team

You will be working with ON’s highly creative CMD team, driven by innovation, performance, sustainability and collaboration. You will be rooted in our design team which includes fellow CMD, Footwear, Apparel, and Accessory Designers who all closely collaborate alongside our Developers, Product Managers, Innovation and GTM teams.

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What we offer

On is a place that is centered around growth and progress. We offer an environment designed to give people the tools to develop holistically – to stay active, to learn, explore and innovate. Our distinctive approach combines a supportive, team-oriented atmosphere, with access to personal self-care for both physical and mental well-being, so each person is led by purpose.

On is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to creating a work environment that is fair and inclusive, where all decisions related to recruitment, advancement, and retention are free of discrimination.

Build the better you

What to expect

We want to set everyone up for success, so here’s the lowdown on how we hire. Our process is a two-way street – bringing you into our culture, while helping us learn how you think.

Our full process can last about eight weeks from application to offer, because we care about getting it right. These steps explain how we usually do things.

Before you get started, feel free to consider if you want to work with us. Strange question? Well, we give people a lot of space to navigate their day-to-day and that style isn't for everyone. We want you to be passionate about what you do and be sure this is the right fit. Because when skills and passion combine – it creates that 'Wow' moment.