About the job
Founded in 2020, FIKA’s origin is a lifestyle brand redefining cannabis retail including flagship locations in Toronto’s Union Station and Distillery District. The FIKA Company is the home of 10 + Canadian retail banners, with over 200+ stores across Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., and Yukon. At FIKA we provide exceptional service in a variety of welcoming, intuitive, and diversified store environments, this has allowed The FIKA Company retail family to evolve into the destination for every type of cannabis consumer.
Reports To: EVP, Merchandising & Open Fields
Location: Toronto, ON
About the Role
At FIKA, retail is more than a transaction - it’s an experience that makes people feel something. The Director, Visual Merchandising leads the creative and strategic vision for how FIKA’s retail banners show up in stores, translating brand identities, commercial priorities, product stories, seasonal programming, and customer insights into elevated, compliant retail experiences. As the senior visual merchandising expert, this role sets the vision, standards, systems, and operating model that drive consistent, high-impact experiences while preserving each banner’s distinct brand personality.
The Director partners with Marketing, Retail Operations, Purchasing, Merchandising, Commercial, Compliance, Construction, Licensed Producers, and other stakeholders to ensure every customer touchpoint is intentional, inspiring, educational, commercially effective, and unmistakably FIKA. This highly visible role is ideal for a strategic creative leader who understands how brand, customer experience, commercial performance, execution, and cannabis culture come together in great visual merchandising.
What You’ll Do:
Enterprise Visual Merchandising Strategy & Leadership
- Develop and own the enterprise-wide visual merchandising strategy across FIKA Company’s multi-banner retail portfolio.
- Establish a clear vision for how visual merchandising contributes to brand equity, customer experience, product discovery, education, and commercial performance.
- Translate enterprise business objectives, brand strategies, seasonal priorities, promotional programming, and category priorities into compelling visual merchandising strategies.
- Define visual merchandising principles, standards, and frameworks that create consistency across the enterprise while allowing each banner to maintain its unique brand expression.
- Act as the enterprise subject matter expert and strategic advisor for all visual merchandising-related initiatives.
- Build and continuously evolve the visual merchandising function, including processes, tools, standards, and ways of working.
- Build a strong internal network of visual merchandising champions across the enterprise.
Brand Experience & Visual Storytelling
- Lead the development of innovative, customer-centric visual merchandising concepts that bring cannabis culture, product stories, education, and brand experiences to life.
- Ensure every visual touchpoint supports the customer journey, from discovery and education through consideration and purchase.
- Partner with Brand and Marketing teams to translate brand campaigns, product launches, seasonal moments, and promotional priorities into impactful retail experiences.
- Develop visual storytelling strategies that balance creativity, education, accessibility, compliance, and commercial performance.
- Champion elevated, differentiated, and culturally relevant retail experiences that help FIKA stand apart in a competitive cannabis landscape.
- Stay ahead of emerging trends in retail, cannabis, culture, design, consumer behaviour, and experiential merchandising.
Enterprise Standards, Playbooks & Execution
- Own and maintain the enterprise Visual Merchandising Playbook, including standards, principles, guidelines, planograms, fixture strategies, display standards, and execution expectations.
- Establish clear visual merchandising standards for stores across varying formats, footprints, banners, and market conditions.
- Develop scalable systems and tools that enable retail teams to execute visual merchandising programs consistently and effectively.
- Develop training, tools, and resources that empower store and field teams to execute with confidence.
- Create clear, inspiring, and practical guidance for field and store teams.
- Partner with Retail Operations and field leadership to ensure successful implementation and sustained execution.
- Establish processes to monitor execution quality, identify gaps, and drive continuous improvement across the retail network.
- Balance enterprise consistency with the realities of individual store layouts, local market needs, inventory availability, and operational constraints.
- Ensure all visual merchandising strategies, signage, displays, activations, and communications comply with applicable cannabis regulations and provincial requirements.
Requirements
- 5+ years of progressive experience in visual merchandising, retail experience, brand activation, retail marketing, or a related discipline.
- 3+ years of experience leading visual merchandising strategy at a senior leadership level.
- Experience developing enterprise-wide visual merchandising strategies across multiple locations, brands, or retail formats.
- Strong understanding of retail operations, customer experience, commercial merchandising, and in-store execution.
- Proven experience developing playbooks, standards, planograms, fixtures, displays, and scalable execution tools.
- Strong commercial acumen and experience using data and insights to inform merchandising decisions.
- Exceptional creative judgment with the ability to connect brand storytelling to business outcomes.
- Strong cross-functional leadership, communication, and stakeholder influence skills.
- Experience in regulated retail is an asset; cannabis experience is highly preferred.
- Willingness and ability to travel regularly to retail locations across the network.
Why you’ll love working here
The people who do best here are builders. They take ownership, move fast, and want to see the direct impact of their work.
Executive Access: Work directly with the executives and senior leadership to solve real business problems.
Accelerated Career Path: High performers are quickly entrusted with greater responsibility, new challenges, and leadership opportunities.
Competitive Benefits (Canada): Comprehensive benefits including paid time off, access to Employee assistance programs, group benefits, and employee discounts across portfolio brands.
For Ontario applicants, please note that this posting is for a new vacancy.
The FIKA Company respects the diversity of the people it hires and serves. Inclusion to us means fostering a workplace in which individual differences are recognized, appreciated, respected, and responded to in ways that fully develop and utilize each person’s talents and strengths.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
