Expansion Leader for New Markets to Development Function IKEA of Sweden, Älmhult

IKEA of Sweden, or IoS, is responsible for developing the IKEA range and making it available to stores and customers all over the world. At IKEA of Sweden you will work in a company with endless opportunities to develop in different operational areas and countries. At IKEA we believe that when you as an individual grow - IKEA grows!

The overall responsibility of Product Requirements & Compliance is to make the range sellable by securing safe and healthy products that corresponds to legislations and exceeds customer expectations.

As an Expansion Leader you drive all necessary actions from early market scanning and securing the Business area’s planning, as well as ensuring that actions throughout the IKEA value chain takes place on time. This in order to serve IKEA customers an agreed sellable range at the Day of opening as well as supporting PR&C operations in new and challenging markets.

The assignment

The job includes working with the Product Requirements & Compliance (PR&C) team to perform consequence analysis for the new sales markets with regards to range and market input. Based on the requirements analysis, you will be responsible for planning project activities, coordinating with the HFB’s (Home Furnishing Businesses) and leading the implementation as well as following up project results. You will manage project budgets and lead people involved in the implementation throughout IKEA.

In the role as Expansion Leader you will:
• Secure the business areas range adaptation planning and execution related to upcoming expansion
• Responsible to ensure implementation within Supply Chain towards the new market
• Support franchisees in new markets with contacts to other IKEA units, i.e. Inter IKEA Systems, IKEA Supply AG, IFPM etc.
• Handling Market range restrictions and Range exemption administration
• Coordination of new language implementation
• Handling Import restrictions, for ex. shipment certifications setup and operational customs regulations
• Legal Product Information handling including strategic and operational labelling issues and systems.
• Follow Up on recently opened or complex markets in order to improve or settle upcoming issues.

Some travelling is part of the role and in periods it occurs more frequently.

Is this your next challenge?

To be successful in this role you need to have:
• Several years of documented experience as a Project Leader
• Experience of the IKEA range
• Good knowledge in IKEA main business processes (mainly product development)
• Good communication skills

As a person you have a strong drive and high commitment to reach results and you do this by engaging others in an inspirational and professional way, and you are motivated by working cross functional. You need an ability to understand, communicate and drive change across cultures and since the role includes a large area of responsibility you must to be focused on the big picture by managing strategies as well as being comfortable working with the fine details from time to time.

Furthermore you are solutions oriented with both business and customer in focus. Since you will communicate with different stakeholders and partners, both internally and externally, you need to be good at creating trust and to build long term relationships. You thrive on exploring new grounds and finding solutions to arising new challenges and you have a strong desire to contribute to IKEA´s growth by expanding into new territories. Fluency in spoken and written English is of course essential. If you have experience from operational roles in different countries it is considered a plus.

If you have questions about this position, please contact recruiting manager Torbjörn Svensson at +46 72 352 80 05. If you have questions regarding the actual recruitment process arise, you can turn to Recruitment Specialist Jonas Levin at +46 72 886 53 84. We will be interviewing continuously, which means that we may close the application process earlier than stated if we find the right candidate. So don't delay, please send us your application in English today.