Associate Designer, Textiles
About the Team
The Rejuvenation product development team consists of highly creative, collaborative, and technical thinkers. As a key member of the team, you will bring your design skills to the table to support the Textile team by bringing high quality home textiles to market.
Position Summary
As the Associate Designer for Textiles, you will support design for textiles across the home. Categories include rugs, bedding, throw pillows, blankets, quilts, bath textiles, outdoor textiles, drapery, and more. In this role, you will be a key designer on the design team from concept to launch. Our Associate Designer for Textiles will help inspire, innovate, and translate seasonal concepts and market trends into design solutions that meet business needs.
Specific Responsibilities
- Partner with our Senior Designer for Textiles to develop a cohesive look and feel for bedrooms and living rooms each quarter, aligning with the brand’s quarterly concepts.
- Identify a breadth of customers to offer distinct product assortments that cater to an array of new and existing design aesthetics for the brand.
- Partner with merchants to identify white space for new products and colorways that bring forward new points of view that build off existing core products.
- Participate in weekly product review meetings and quarterly design presentations.
- Create cohesive color palettes per collection, building off the brand’s existing core assortment and quarterly concepts each season.
- Manage communication with vendors to provide design direction for net new collections and provide feedback for print and pattern alterations.
- Maintain a quality standards and consistent color stories for textiles with all key vendors through lab dips and pom selection.
- Create design presentations each quarter, inclusive of design inspiration, color palettes, custom patterns, CADs, and samples from vendors.
- Bring forward new techniques and materials that align with quality expectations, price points, and market trends.
- Participate in weekly product development meetings, owning the development cycle for the textile design team.
- Create pairings for seasonal textile assortment to build quarterly bedding and living room looks each season.
- Work directly with overseas partners to produce designs on time each quarter.
- Occasional travel to domestic and international markets, 2-4 times per year, to identify vendor capabilities and build cohesive textiles assortments.
- Lead the creation of spec packs for vendor communication, maintaining quality and standards and production.
- Produce and manage documents for sample comments.
- Participate in virtual and in-person vendor meetings to ensure designs and sampling are being produced on time.
- Identify key priorities each quarter and manage timelines to drive results.
- Participate in a creative culture that inspires others through curated design inspiration, historical design research, and knowledge of materials and techniques
- Lead with accountability within the design team to ensure deliverables are delivered efficiently and on time.
- Ensure sustainable goals and are being met by making intentional design choices that align with the brand’s sustainable initiatives.
Qualifications
- Minimum of 3 years product design experience with a focus in textiles for a retail brand.
- Minimum of 1-2 years in rug product development, working with hand-knotted, flatwoven, and hand-loomed constructions.
- Proven track record of building seasonal textile assortments across the home on a quarterly launch timeline.
- Highly detail-oriented, excellent time management skills, and highly collaborative.
- Ability to inspire cross functional partners by presenting thoughtful concepts inspired by market trends, fashion, and interior designers.
- Knowledgeable in all aspects of textile design and manufacturing for home products, including weave structures, dyeing techniques, print and pattern styles, trim details, and production standards.
- Proven proficiency in Adobe Creative Cloud applications: Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
- Ability to create seasonal color palettes that align with existing products and new seasonal concepts.
- Ability to create custom illustrative artwork in-house that will be applied across bedding, throw pillows, wallpaper, and more.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to present ideas and design strategies.
- Experience working within a four-quarter brand calendar for a retail housewares brand.
- Strong organizational and time management skills with the ability to work, both, collaboratively and independently.
- Experience employing design strategies to achieve business goals.
- High standards to quality, integrity and design.
Personal Competencies
Global Business Acumen – Understand the complexity of business on a global scale. Embrace cultural and individual differences with empathy. Work with the nuances of specific local cultures to make informed decisions.
Strategic and Analytical Capability -- Ability to think globally, strategically, and objectively. Effectively translates data into actionable insights, strategies and financial plans.
Leading Teams -- Attracts, develops and motives the talent needed for current and future business requirements. Articulates an inspiring vision for the future, establishes high performance expectations and sets example through own behavior. Ensures alignment of individual goals with overall business objectives. Coaches team members to success and holds individuals accountable for achieving results.
Drive for Results -- Credibility earned through delivering results. Balances urgent and effective action, commitment to excellence, taking initiative to resolve problems and work quality. Demonstrates high initiative and provides leadership in a project-oriented environment.
Effective Communication -- Communicates clearly and effectively with associates at all levels, board members, external partners and customers. Strong verbal and written presentation skills including the ability to communicate complex ideas in a simple way and to tailor key messages and presentation style to multiple audiences.
Influence and Collaboration -- Builds and sustains collaborative relationships at multiple levels in the company. Able to work through complex disagreements and conflict to achieve resolution. Builds trust by including others and by keeping the cross-functional teams focused on the success of the entire company.
Our Company
Founded in 1956, Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is the premier specialty retailer of high-quality products for the kitchen and home in the United States. Our family of brands are Williams Sonoma, Williams Sonoma Home, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, Rejuvenation, West Elm, Mark & Graham, Outward, and GreenRow. These brands are among the best known and most respected in the industry. We offer beautifully-designed, stylish and functional products for every area of the home, including the kitchen, living room, bedroom, home office, closet, laundry room and even outdoor spaces. We've seen some big changes since our first brick-and-mortar store opened more than half of a century ago. What hasn't changed is our passion for high-quality products, functional design, outstanding customer service, and enhancing the lives of our customers and the communities where we operate. Today, we're a multi-brand, multi-channel, global enterprise supported by state-of-the-art technology and some of the most talented teams in retailing - and we're always looking for new energy and ideas.
