China Director of Product and Consumer Insights, Based in Shanghai

Introduction Bata Group is one of the world's leading manufacturers and retailers of quality footwear. Bata operates in more than 70 countries through a multi-brand, omnichannel business model. The Product organisation plays a critical role in enabling profitable growth by bringing the real pulse of the local market into Bata/North Star, translating consumer and competitive intelligence into product decisions that shape the global range. Role Description The Director of Product and Consumer Insights acts as the primary interface between the local OpCo market and the global product team, representing market needs and ensuring continuous two-way communication throughout the product creation calendar. The role becomes the local authority on consumer lifestyles, trends, and business opportunities for Bata and North Star — the country's eyes, ears, and instinct — owning the discovery and articulation of local market product requirements through on-the-ground market research, consumer insights platforms, behavioural data, and online trend analysis. ● Continuously analyzes local sell-through and commercial performance, translating quantitative and qualitative insights into actionable product recommendations. ● Identifies and proactively communicates market and product opportunities based on consumer behavior, competitive activity, and emerging trends. ● Delivers structured and regular market, consumer, competitor, and retail updates to support global product and business decisions. ● Acts as the local ambassador for global product initiatives, driving understanding, alignment, and implementation of global priorities within the region. ● Works alongside the global team across the entire creation calendar, present at key meetings to ensure market needs are addressed and new opportunities socialized in both directions. ● Cascades and translates global brand direction into actionable local strategies, embedding seasonal priorities, key product stories, innovation focus, hero products, and commercial priorities. ● Balances local relevance with global brand and portfolio coherence while localizing the product direction into the local market context. ● Translates market interpretation into clear product needs, including priority bets, required price points, and margin expectations, and provides qualitative product input to inform global range architecture. ● Provides a qualitative perspective on category dynamics, competitive landscape, and channel differences to inform global range design, and supports Commercial Planning in defining strong seasonal assortments tailored to local markets. ● Captures, tracks, and translates deep consumer and usage insights and market signals — behaviours, trends, unmet needs — into clear product requirements. ● Builds strong processes and team capabilities to ensure delivery of GTM discipline, process clarity, and global/local governance and collaboration. Success in this position requires a practiced footwear or sneaker-category eye, strong data analysis and dissection skills, and the social leadership to carry the global message back to local teams while representing local reality to global. This is fundamentally a market intelligence and consumer-insight role, not a traditional merchandiser, buyer, or demand planner. Key Interfaces ● Global Product, Design, and Range Architecture teams ● Commercial Planning, Merchandising, and Marketing ● Retail teams and in-store staff, and external industry networks tracking marketplace evolution ● Direct reporting line to the OpCo General Manager; dotted reporting line to the President of Bata/North Star Key Persona Attributes ● Dynamic, curious, energetic, and deeply connected to local culture; young mindset, strong taste, strong eyes, strong commercial instinct. ● Comfortable walking stores, talking to consumers, following creators, tracking competitors, reading data, and spotting weak signals — fast, visual, brave, social, digitally fluent. ● Trend Scout — spots what is emerging before it becomes obvious. ● Product Hunter — finds shapes, colors, materials, prices, and ideas that could work for Bata. ● Cultural Connector — stays close to youth, families, communities, workers, sports, music, creators, and local life. ● Consumer Journalist — asks questions, observes people, and understands behavior. ● Competitor Detective — knows who is winning, at what price, with which products. ● Business Translator — understands Bata/North Star performance and turns observations into commercial opportunities. Knowledge, Skills Knowledge ● Strong understanding of the footwear or fashion-retail industry, including seasonal and carryover products, size curves, and product lifecycle. ● Solid knowledge of consumer insights methodologies, behavioural data platforms, and market/competitor intelligence gathering. ● Understanding of range architecture, price/margin guardrails, and the product creation calendar. ● Familiarity with sell-through and commercial performance data and retail KPIs. ● Knowledge of the global-to-local product cascade and how seasonal priorities, hero products, and innovation focus are embedded into local strategy. Skills ● Strong data analysis and dissection skills, able to move fluidly between quantitative sell-through data and real-world market/consumer observation. ● Ability to convert market and consumer signals into clear, actionable product requirements and business opportunities. ● Excellent communication and social leadership skills to represent local reality to global teams and vice versa. ● Strong collaboration skills across Product, Design, Commercial Planning, and Retail. ● Ability to balance local relevance with global brand and portfolio coherence. ● Strong process orientation, able to build governance and continuity within the local product team. Educational Qualifications and Work Experience ● Footwear/fashion-retail background required — the role sets shape, material, price, and trend calls directly for Bata/NS footwear and needs a practiced footwear or sneaker-category eye, not just general fashion/FMCG product sense. ● Open, trend-driven mindset valued over a fixed tenure threshold — someone who reads consumer and market signals early and translates them into commercial opportunity. ● Track record of moving fluidly between quantitative data and real-world market/consumer observation to generate business opportunities. ● Digitally fluent, with experience tracking trends, competitors, and creators across online and offline channels. ● Prior experience conducting on-the-ground market research, including in-store staff and consumer engagement and external industry networking. Language Proficiency ● English ● OpCo Language