Senior Color Designer - Footwear
Portland, OR
Product Creation – Footwear /
Full-time /
Hybrid
Your Opportunity at ARC’TERYX:
As a Color Designer – Footwear, you drive the Footwear color processes from concept through development and delivery of seasonal collections. with recognized color excellence, you maintain a strong competitive advantage in all relevant markets. You champion the color creation systems and processes in close alignment with the North Vancouver Color Design team, to support Arc’teryx brand standards, colour merchandising philosophies, design and product principles.
This role is based out of our Portland office and is expected to be performed on location.
Meet Your Future Team:
The Arc’teryx Footwear team creates innovative, beautiful product that exceeds the core mountain athlete needs in the outdoors across climb, hike and mountain run. We balance creativity, design, process, and logistics to ensure the successful execution of the Arc’teryx color design philosophy. Fueled by curiosity, we take an immersive approach to identifying our athlete’s future needs then build, test, and validate products that solve for real functional challenges. We are passionate collective with a focus on collaborative teamwork and our vision is to redefine the industry. This role will align with the Color Design team, who are a hub that links the product design and visual merchandising process with the guest experience.
If you were the Color Designer – Footwear now, here are some of the core activities you would be doing:
- Forecasting and strategizing along-term color direction for Footwear product collections, and collaborating to create cross-category cohesiveness that exceed industry expectations
- Establishing best practices to increase efficiency and color quality assurance across color development process
- Creating and evolving footwear concepts to achieve product excellence in color execution, color systems, color creation documents, presentations and color manufacturing
- Participating in weekly meetings with the North Vancouver Color Design team, connecting projects, campaigns and creative color direction plans with the Portland Footwear team
- Creating, proposing and presenting article assortments, and merchandising concepts
- Maintaining material maps and calendar milestones, supporting the Senior Materials Designer
- Creating color palettes that embrace sociological insights, awareness of global and regional trends, current color harmony tendencies and regional color preferences
- Collaborating with Designers on the creation of innovative and efficient new products that are feasible within a manufacturing environment
- Collaborating with the Merchandising team to establish a seasonal continuance strategy, color and blocking lifecycle strategy, retail store flow plans and regional directed assortments
- Driving color merchandising concepts through optimal outfit coordination, article assortment aesthetics and cross-merchandising strategies
- Delivering commercial color assortments that meet article efficiency targets by analyzing metrics and gathering insights from athletes and business channels including sales, forecasting and product line management
- Optimizing color design across an extensive and complex raw material matrix to ensure successful color applications to products
- Managing the color lifecycle of products to ensure that there is a balance between timelines and the creative process
Here are some of the things you could be working on in the future:
- Expanding your design portfolio in terms of complexity and scope
- Contributing to colour strategy within models and across the portfolio
- Aligning the Footwear product calendar to the overall Arc’teryx product calendar
- Collaborating internally and externally on projects and apparel moments
Are you our next Colour Designer – Footwear?
- You have an Apparel Design Diploma or the equivalent experience, and 5+years’ experience in color environment
- You have a foundational knowledge of footwear material types, material application, and material functionality
- You have a demonstrated and extraordinary sense for color harmony
- You have extensive knowledge of color theory
- You have superior level color acuity
- You have an understanding of diverse materials and a curiosity to learn technical capacities and limitations
- You are a keen and comfortable storyteller
- You have a proven ability to deliver successful commercial collections
- You have an awareness of Arc’teryx products and their applications
- You have advanced skills in the Adobe Creative Suite Applications
- You have an understanding of the retail buying and line development process
- You have knowledge of manufacturing timelines
- You have the ability to adhere to critical path and established deadlines
- You are a proactive and creative problem solver
- You have strong attention to detail
- You have excellent communication skills
- You have demonstrated leadership and influencing skills
- You have a strong awareness of global markets and cultural differences
Equal Opportunity
Arc’teryx is committed to actively creating and fostering a culture of inclusivity where voices are heard, people are seen, and values are respected. We care about the uniqueness of our applicants, employees, and guests, and we do so in a safe space fueled by curiosity and acceptance.
Creating an inclusive workplace is connected to our core value Do Right while also having the added benefit of helping make our business better. We believe inclusion helps us to create a healthier, happier workplace, drive creativity and innovation, and reflect the communities where we operate.
All applicants, employees, and guests can expect equality of opportunity and fair treatment in alignment with our values.
Leave it Better
We believe that the mountains transform us, that how we adventure matters, and that there’s always a better way.
Join us in creating positive change in ourselves, our communities, and the world.
Live it. Get out there - the mountains make us better
Disruptive evolution. In pursuit of better. Always.
Commit. We set bold objectives and see them through.
