Retail Store Manager

 The Store Manager at Once Upon A Child Allentown leads all daily store operations to deliver a clean, organized, welcoming shopping experience for families buying and selling gently used children’s apparel, shoes, toys, baby equipment, and accessories. This role combines strong retail leadership, team development, inventory management, customer service, and local business ownership mindset.

The Store Manager is accountable for achieving sales, buying, payroll, productivity, and profitability goals while ensuring the store consistently follows Once Upon A Child standards. They build a high-performing team, maintain efficient buying and merchandising processes, and create a culture that is focused on serving customers, supporting coworkers, and continuously improving results.

Core Responsibilities:

• Lead day-to-day store operations, including opening and closing procedures, cash handling, store security, cleanliness, and overall readiness for customers.
• Hire, train, coach, schedule, and retain a dependable team of buyers, sales associates, keyholders, and assistant managers.
• Create clear expectations for employee performance, customer interaction, attendance, productivity, and adherence to store policies.
• Deliver excellent customer service to both buyers and sellers, resolving concerns professionally and ensuring every customer feels respected and valued.
• Oversee the buying process for children’s clothing, footwear, toys, baby gear, and equipment to ensure inventory meets quality, safety, seasonality, brand, and local customer-demand standards.
• Maintain strong buying productivity by monitoring buy counter wait times, acceptance rates, processing speed, payout accuracy, and seller experience.
• Ensure merchandise is priced accurately, processed efficiently, stocked promptly, and displayed according to company standards and seasonal priorities.
• Manage inventory levels and product flow by balancing buying, processing, replenishment, markdowns, transfers, clearance, and donation or disposal decisions.
• Drive sales through effective merchandising, floor recovery, feature displays, promotional execution, signage, cross-selling, and seasonal transitions.
• Review daily, weekly, and monthly sales, labor, buying, inventory, and productivity results; identify gaps and implement action plans to improve performance.
• Build schedules that provide proper coverage during high-traffic shopping and buying periods while controlling payroll and labor expenses.
• Conduct regular coaching conversations, performance reviews, recognition, corrective action, and development planning for team members.
• Train employees on product knowledge, safety standards, customer-service expectations, buying guidelines, point-of-sale procedures, and loss-prevention practices.
• Maintain a safe work environment, including proper handling of baby equipment, recalls, product safety requirements, incident reporting, and compliance with company policies.
• Monitor cash controls, deposits, register accuracy, refunds, discounts, voids, and other financial procedures to protect store assets.
• Reduce shrink through consistent inventory controls, receiving practices, employee awareness, cycle counts, and loss-prevention follow-up.
• Coordinate store maintenance, supply ordering, equipment needs, vendor communication, and facility issues to keep the Allentown location operating smoothly.
• Support local marketing and community engagement efforts, including social media execution, events, partnerships, loyalty programs, and outreach to families in the Allentown area.
• Communicate store goals, priorities, promotions, operational updates, and performance results clearly to the team.
• Lead by example with urgency, accountability, professionalism, flexibility, and a willingness to work alongside the team during busy periods.