Retail Art Director, NA Brand Creative (Freelance, 1 year Contract)

COMPANY BACKGROUND

lululemon’s purpose—to elevate the world by realizing the full potential within every one of us—reflects both its origins and its momentum. Founded in Vancouver in 1998 to bring technical athletic fabrics to yoga, the company began as a product design studio by day and yoga studio by night. That community-focused beginning continues to shape lululemon’s distinctive approach, with stores serving as hubs where guests can sweat, grow, and connect.

lululemon ended 2021 with $6.26 billion in revenue, up 42% from 2020, following significant growth in its digital, men’s, and international businesses. Its five-year growth plan targeted doubling total revenue to $12.5 billion by the start of 2027 through market expansion, product innovation, and a distinctive omni guest experience. The company’s 550+ stores remain central to this strategy by connecting each local community to the brand and supporting continued retail expansion.

Driving Positive Change in the World and within lululemon. lululemon’s multi-year impact strategy focuses on three pillars. Be Human strengthens employee support through improved pay, mental health benefits, mentorship, and leadership development. Be Well advances equity in wellbeing through the lululemon Centre for Social Impact, grassroots grants, nonprofit partnerships, and global research. Be Planet advances lower-impact materials, sustainable product innovation, re-commerce through lululemon Like New, and initiatives to reduce emissions across the value chain.

Inclusion & Diversity. Through its Impact Agenda and IDEA team—Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Action—lululemon is working to create systemic change and better reflect the communities it serves. Actions include expanding the IDEA team globally, establishing employee-led resource groups, investing dedicated resources, and using the brand’s voice to stand against hate and discrimination. By putting people first and holding leaders accountable, lululemon aims to embed inclusion, wellbeing, and positive community impact into its culture and every guest and employee experience.

THE MANDATE of the ROLE

The Retail Art Director, North AmericaRetail Brand Creative is responsible for NA Retail Creative Direction in partnership with the Retail Brand Experience (RBE) team. This includes windows, in-store touchpoints, pop-up/ins and new store opening expressions.

This role translates brand narratives into compelling physical expressions across our global retail fleet, ensuring every activation is emotionally resonant, commercially impactful, consistent/connected in narrative, and locally executable at scale.

You will partner to develop experiential and engaging creative concepts that can excite and delight the guest of today and tomorrow, from the street to key store touchpoints, as well as evergreen solutions for our fleet or stores.

As a unique and highly collaborative role within lululemon, the Retail Art Director, NA Brand Creative works in close partnership with Global and Regional partners, including: Store Design, Brand Marketing, Product, Retail Brand Experience (RBE), In-Store Marketing, Visual Merchandising. Acting as the connector between campaign concept and retail realization, this role ensures cohesive storytelling across windows, store touchpoints, and key moments throughout the year.

This role requires strong conceptual thinking, exceptional ability to set the direction of intent, onboard teams and leaders and the ability to guide creative from initial vision through to prototyping and regional rollout. Balancing craft with operational realities, the Retail Art Director elevates the in-store brand experience while driving clarity, consistency, and innovation across markets.

REPORTING STRUCTURE, TEAM + PEERS

The role is a direct report into the VP, NA Brand Creative and will have a dotted line into the Sr Director, NA RBE. Closely working with the NA Brand Creative Team to develop and refine creative concepts and approaches, while in close cross-functional partnership with NA Brand Marketing teams to deliver against established strategy.

a day in the life: what you’ll do….

• Creative development and oversight of NA store windows, touch points and ideation on key product destination architecture
• Creative partnership with internal creative team and external vendors to ensure seamless execution
• Able to navigate the market and be-able to inspire the guest of tomorrow
• Responsible for elevating the NA Retail creative output across key launch touchpoints in the physical realm, identity, and Pop-ups (the omni experience)
• Extends RBE creative strategy working closely with internal teams
• Partners with strategy to identify and deliver against brand and product storytelling objectives
• Uses market trends, consumer need, and competitive landscape and to support creative strategies
• Responsible for influencing and collaborating with cross-functional and regional executive teammates
• Research and seek new possibilities in the materials, aiming to focus on ‘making well-being and sustainability’ key focus for stores
• Bring the energy, from the pin-ups to creative crits, the role is to be inclusive and help drive new creative horizons
• Be able to present up to VP/Exec/C-suite and regional leads, etc.

PLANNING & RESOURCE

• Develops best-in-class creative process and resource strategies for projects both in-house and externally based on business strategy and roadmap
• Identifies resource and timeline gaps and calendar efficiencies with team and key executive counterparts
• Work closely with Creative Ops and Retail Ops partners - responsible for executing on-time and on-budget
• Develops creative initiatives based on project and business needs

MANAGEMENT

• Must be-able to take all on the journey, working with best-in-class Retail Design and Realisation teams and facilities
• Be able to source and work with agencies, freelancers and specialists
• Inspires teams - pushes methods, creative processes and thinking (brand storytelling, consistency, and differentiation)
• Reports progress of projects at major stages to RBE and NA Brand Creative

SKILLS

• Must have retail design experience
• Executive presentation skills
• Leadership skills / interpersonal skills
• Naturally partners with creatives in the business
• Expert in creative direction across store channels and media (facades, fixtures, materials, digital innovation, consumer surprise & delight moments & environments)
• Visual/3d Art Direction (Spatial)
• fluent in Figma, Sketch-up, Keynote, InDesign, CS SUITE and 3d-Render software, but can also leverage the in-house team and external consultants for this
• Drives cross-functional collaboration
• Creative and strategic thinker & influencer
• Excellent verbal & written skills (creative and comms)
• 7+ years of agency oversight
• Global/North America experience with proven portfolio
• Expert in turning a guest insight into impactful creative
• Visual curator with strong creative vision