About the role

At the crossroads of fashion and sport, Lacoste creates and liberates movement. Both universal and timeless, the brand transcends cultures and generations, elevating the crocodile as a rallying sign.

An iconic French brand present in nearly 100 countries, Lacoste stands out for its unique know-how in each of its areas of expertise, from garment factory to omnichannel distribution.

At Lacoste, elegance goes beyond style. This elegance guides all of its actions and its social and environmental commitments.

Working at Lacoste is belonging to a community of 8,500 employees on the move to build the future. Committed to making equal opportunities a reality and to revealing potential, the company brings together talents from all walks of life, embracing their differences.

Lacoste is one of the inspiring brands driven by passionate people within the MF Brands Group, alongside Aigle, Gant and Tecnifibre (https://mf-brands.com/).

ROLE OVERVIEW:

This regional leadership position provides strategic and functional leadership for Quality, Product Compliance, Responsible Sourcing Compliance, Sustainability and Footwear Sourcing across the Americas Platform. The role leads multidisciplinary and multicultural functions within a Global matrix organization and operates through direct leadership, functional influence and cross-functional governance.

Purpose: To safeguard product and supplier integrity, consumer safety, regulatory compliance, market access and brand reputation while strengthening supplier performance, resilience and business continuity across the Americas apparel and footwear supplier network.

Main activities:

Provide strategic and functional leadership for Quality, Product Compliance, Responsible Sourcing Compliance, Sustainability and Footwear Sourcing across the Americas Platform, ensuring alignment with enterprise priorities and Global strategies.
Establish integrated regional governance across apparel and footwear to safeguard product integrity, consumer safety, regulatory compliance, market access and brand reputation.
Define the regional Supplier Quality and Product Compliance strategy, strengthening supplier capability, product-release governance, regulatory readiness and continuous improvement.
Lead the Responsible Sourcing and Sustainability agenda, ensuring risk-based supplier eligibility, management of critical social and environmental risks, traceability, responsible materials and supplier transformation.
Define and lead the regional Footwear Sourcing strategy in alignment with Global Footwear, ensuring a resilient supplier portfolio, competitive costing, capacity readiness, commercialization execution and sustainable supplier performance.
Own the integrated supplier risk and performance framework and build the organization required to deliver it, ensuring executive visibility, timely escalation, business continuity, clear accountability and succession readiness.

Governance & Decision Authority:

Establish integrated regional governance, performance reviews and escalation protocols across the functions within scope.
Provide regional decisions and formal recommendations on product and supplier readiness, supplier eligibility, remediation, critical-risk escalation and business continuity within applicable Global governance.
Serve as the senior regional escalation point and recommend supplier onboarding, restriction, suspension or phase-out based on quality, compliance, sustainability, capacity and business risk; final approval thresholds.

Team Management:

Lead, coach and develop the Quality, CSR, Sustainability and Footwear managers and their teams.
Set functional accountabilities, decision rights, performance expectations and succession plans, creating an inclusive and collaborative culture across countries and Global matrix relationships.

Profile

Professional background:

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Textile Science, Chemistry, Supply Chain, Sustainability, Business or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
15+ years of progressive experience across quality, product integrity and compliance, responsible sourcing, sustainability, sourcing or manufacturing within apparel, footwear or comparable consumer-product supply networks.
Significant experience leading managers and geographically dispersed, multicultural teams in a complex Global matrix organization.
Demonstrated record of setting functional strategy, establishing governance, managing critical risk, influencing executive and supplier decisions, and allocating functional resources and budgets.

Skills & Competences:

Enterprise & Strategic Thinking
Executive Judgment & Complex Decision-Making
Influence & Stakeholder Leadership across a Global Matrix
Organizational Leadership & Talent Development
Risk, Change & Execution Leadership
Change Management

Technical Expertise:

Enterprise Supplier Quality & Product Integrity
Product Safety, Testing, Chemical & Regulatory Compliance
Responsible Sourcing, Human Rights & Environmental Due Diligence
Sustainability Strategy, Traceability & Responsible Materials
Supplier Risk, Performance, Footwear Sourcing & Business Continuity

Specific requirements:

Fluent in English and Spanish; French is a plus.
Ability to operate effectively across a Global matrix and multicultural supplier environment.
Availability for regular international travel across supplier countries and Global business locations.

At Lacoste, we are committed to making equal opportunities a reality.

Inherited from our unique vision of fashion-sport, equal opportunities move us forward and our recruitment methods follow this commitment by focusing on skills and embracing all types of talents.

We commit to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment where elegance goes beyond style and where each of us is given the chance to fulfill our greatest potential.

Skills

Innovation

Business Oriented

Change Management

Decision maker

Adaptability

Advanced Excel

Negotiation skills

Business result oriented with customers’ insights

Analytical and problem-solving skills

Assertive with communication and interpersonal relationships

Mental agility

Results oriented

Strong apparel industry background

Familiar with product development procedures and all the samples schedule

Vendor Management

Stakeholder Management

Understand the brand strategy in terms of the product in order to challenge business requirements

Good command of Spanish and English

Different sections of Sourcing and Product Development

Working closely with Quality and Production areas among the Platform

Quality, CSR & Sustainability Director - Americas