Operations Manager

About Curve Gear

Curve Gear is a South African workwear brand built for the people who build South Africa. In roughly five years we have grown from nothing to 16 stores nationwide and a growing Kit Your Crew corporate channel. Our gear carries real promises — including a lifetime guarantee on our hero hoodie — and those promises are only true if the stores execute them properly, every day. We don’t take shortcuts, not in the product and not in the process.

Purpose of the role

Sixteen stores must run as one machine — the same standard, the same way, every day, in every store. The Operations Manager owns that machine. You own the day-to-day operations of the retail fleet: the operating system the stores run on, the people who run them, the numbers they produce, and the discipline that holds it all together when nobody is watching.

This is not a head-office administrator role. You will spend real time on shop floors across the country, and you will be judged on what happens on those floors.

Key responsibilities

Retail operating system

• Own, maintain and improve the store operating manual, SOPs and standards (opening, closing, cash-up, handover, replenishment, receiving, returns and guarantees), and make sure every store runs them the same way.
• Run the operating cadence: daily store briefs and standards walks, weekly trade reviews, four-weekly store P&L reviews, quarterly stock takes and audits.
• Run a structured store-visit and audit programme through area management — floor, books and people — ending in dated actions with owners.

People leadership

• Lead area management and, through them, 16 store managers: set targets, coach performance, and deal with underperformance directly and fairly.
• Own rostering discipline — staffing matched to trade, within wage-to-turnover targets and BCEA requirements.
• Own the training ladder: onboarding, product and service training (including safety-boot fitment), and store-manager development, so every store can run to standard without supervision.

Commercial performance

• Own the fleet’s trading numbers: sales vs target, like-for-like growth, conversion, average transaction value, units per transaction and sales per labour hour — per store and across the fleet.
• Own each store’s four-walls P&L, with wage-to-turnover as the key controllable ratio.
• Diagnose underperforming stores properly — traffic, conversion or basket — and fix the actual constraint, not the symptom.

Stock and loss

• Own stock integrity: receiving discipline, replenishment (core sizes on hero lines never out), sell-through, markdowns and honest stock takes.
• Own shrinkage: identify sources, design controls, hold stores to them.
• Make sure the Hoodie-for-Life guarantee and all returns are executed cleanly in-store — the guarantee is a brand promise, and operations makes it true.

Systems and technology

• Run the fleet on our systems and make the systems work harder: Shopify POS (sales and loyalty), Acumatica (inventory and online-order allocation), EasyTeam (rostering), Microsoft Forms (daily checklists and defect capture), Notion (the Operations Blueprint — our source of truth) and Make.com automations (including automated mall turnover reporting).
• Use the data these systems produce — build and read scorecards, spot exceptions early, and drive decisions with numbers rather than anecdotes.
• Identify where process should be automated or simplified, and see those improvements through to adoption on the floor — not just built.

Growth and projects

• Run new-store openings end to end: site readiness, fit-out, stock build, hiring, launch and ramp to standard.
• Support the Kit Your Crew channel operationally: in-store order intake, embroidery handoff, turnaround commitments kept.

Compliance and risk

• Keep the fleet compliant: BCEA (hours, rosters, leave), Consumer Protection Act (returns and our guarantee), OHSA, POPIA, cash-handling and cash-in-transit safety, and lease obligations including mall turnover reporting.

What you will be measured on

• Measure What it tells us
• Like-for-like sales growth Whether the existing fleet is actually growing
• Wage-to-turnover Labour cost discipline — the key controllable ratio
• Measure What it tells us
• Conversion, ATV, UPT Whether the floors are selling, per store and fleet-wide
• Shrinkage % Stock control and process discipline
• Stock availability on hero
• lines Core sizes in stock — no silent lost sales
• Audit / standards scores The standard holding in every store, every visit
• New-store ramp Openings delivered on time and trading to plan

What we need from you

Experience

• 8+ years in multi-store retail operations, with at least 4 years managing managers across multiple locations (area, regional or national level). Apparel, footwear or workwear retail is a strong advantage.
• A track record of running stores to a documented standard — SOPs, audits, scorecards — and of turning underperforming stores around.
• Hands-on P&L accountability at store or region level: rostering to trade, wage-to-turnover, shrinkage and stock management.
• New-store opening experience is a strong advantage.

Systems fluency (non-negotiable)

• Genuinely comfortable with retail systems — you must be able to work in a POS platform, an inventory/ERP system, a rostering tool and reporting dashboards without hand-holding. Experience with Shopify POS, Acumatica or similar ERPs, and workforce tools like EasyTeam counts in your favour.
• Strong with data: confident building and interpreting reports and spreadsheets, and comfortable working with automated workflows (e.g. Make.com or similar).
• You see technology as a way to run stores better — but you know a report never fixed a store. Behaviour first, tools second.

The person

• A genuine all-rounder — equally at home in a P&L review, a stockroom, a disciplinary process and a systems build. Sixteen stores means every kind of problem, most weeks.
• Direct and honest. You report real numbers, own failures without excuses, and hold others to the same standard.
• Disciplined about process. You believe standards are kept every day, not performed for visits.
• Respect for the customer — our customers are working people whose gear matters to their job and their safety. You take that seriously.
• Willing and able to travel nationally, regularly.

Formal requirements

• Matric essential; a relevant tertiary qualification (retail business management, operations, commerce) is an advantage.
• Valid driver’s licence and own reliable transport.
• Contactable references covering multi-store accountability.

If you don’t hear from us within 14 days of applying, please consider your application unsuccessful. Curve Gear is an equal-opportunity