Over a decade in the Group, Hind has brought her creative flair to visual merchandising at IWC and Montblanc. Through her experience, she has become fearless
How your career journey started…
I'm coming up on my 10-year anniversary with Richemont in February! I started with IWC as a Trade Marketing & Events Assistant Manager. In this role, I took on trade marketing, event planning, retail design in connection with the brand architects in Schaffhausen, managed visual merchandising, developed training programs and collaborated with the marketing and sales teams. Throughout my time there, I realized I greatly enjoyed the creative aspect of my role with visual merchandising and felt that was an area I was most passionate about. After 5 years at IWC and the opening of 8 boutiques, I was ready to focus more on visual merchandising. I wanted to continue to grow and a position was open with Montblanc that was the perfect fit for the next step in my career. By May 2016, I joined Montblanc as the Visual Merchandising Manager.
My role today…
Since joining Montblanc four and a half years ago, I have been focusing on planning, reorganizing and elevating the visual merchandising standards - building a strong VM community across the entire retail network and bringing the overall brand visibility to the next level. It is very hands-on. Coming from a single category watch brand to a multi-category men’s accessories brand is quite complex, but it was exactly where I needed to be. I have an amazing team of two field Visual Merchandisers, one East Coast and one West Coast. Together, we are reaching new heights with best-in-class visual merchandising excellence and consistency throughout the network.
I'm really excited about the journey that I started, the path that I'm on, and what is still yet to come in my career.
What I learned…
It has been an incredible journey! I learned the importance of impactful visual merchandising in connection with sales, high level of details behind planning successful boutique openings, the creative processes supporting retail design, insights of construction buildouts and executing productive training programs with strong engagement. I really admired how a wholesale brand that was so hot at the time, and still is, shifted their entire strategy to focus completely on retail expansion. It was exciting to be part of IWC’s retail growth and lead all the new boutique opening projects during this time.
Most importantly, I learned flexibility and agility are super important because our world is constantly changing. Sometimes you can make plans, set certain goals and timelines, but at the end of the day, you must be super flexible, agile, and open-minded. You must be ready to face new opportunities, open new doors, and find new ways of working, whether it's within your team, on your own, or with another department.
What has surprised me…
The growth opportunities and career development! Richemont has supported my growth and my career advancement through management & leadership programs, various workshops and training modules. Also, my manager, Florent-Aymeric Dubiez, VP of Marketing along with the Montblanc executive team have supported me tremendously to continue to grow, challenge myself and strengthen my leadership skills. I think we should never stop learning. We should never stop growing. Richemont has provided those opportunities for me and I am sure for many others in the Group. I am grateful for it all!
How I have changed…
I am much more confident and fearless. I have grown so much – the strength, wisdom, and knowledge that I have acquired have widened my horizons and opened my eyes. I am not afraid of anything anymore. I am fearless in any project that I take on. I encourage my team to be the best version of themselves. I feel I have a boost of confidence and I am stronger than ever!
My favorite memory…
Well, there was a few! I think that my first moment, which is always going to be a remarkable experience for me, was the opening of the first IWC flagship boutique right here on Madison Avenue. This project was the first boutique opening that I worked on and it was my baby! To see it come to life and to fruition was just truly an amazing moment. We had a huge opening event with a ton of celebrities in attendance – the biggest that we ever had!
When it comes to Montblanc, we collaborated recently with BAPE and launched a limited-edition leather collection that was brilliant! I really enjoyed this project, not only from the events side, but also working on the creative design for our boutique windows in New York, Costa Mesa and San Francisco along with both BAPE stores in Soho and in LA. It was a great opportunity for me to be hands-on creatively, collaborate with my VM counterpart at headquarters in Hamburg and with the BAPE NY team. Also, last year I was given the opportunity to design a super cool window display during the holiday season when we launched our Limited Edition, Great Character: Walt Disney. This was a fun and playful creative project that resulted with the most impactful boutique windows for the season!
So, for the last few years, I have been flourishing even more on my creative side and it is very fulfilling. Overall, it has truly been an amazing ride and I feel so blessed for every part of my story!
My advice…
Whatever you decide to do, make sure that it makes you happy.