Introduction
Your final round is Friday, September 11, at 10:00am, in person at the Mejuri store in Cherry Creek Shopping Center, 3000 E 1st Avenue, Unit 144. It is one on one with Patrik Riverin, Senior Director of Stores. You were told he would be your manager. You have not met him or spoken to him.
Round one was a screen. Round two was the Director of People, the next day. Jennifer emailed Patrik during that call to set this one up. That is not a normal pace. Read it for what it is: you are the front runner, and the company wants this settled. Then set it aside, because it will not help you on Friday. This round is one operator with his own stores to run. He is deciding whether you can run his store without help from him. Everything he asks serves that one question. There is no second listener, no culture check, and no screening checklist. There is a man who runs stores for a living, and an hour of his time.
You described the change yourself on our 9/8 call. The earlier rounds were broad: "tell me about a time you coached an associate to meet a goal." This one is specific. He will ask how you coach the team to drive sales, then store operations, then the finer details of the job. Four rules for Friday:
- "I," not "we." What you did. He can ask about the team afterward.
- A number first, then how, then what it cost. The result, the mechanism, the trade-off, in that order. Round one was result first. This round is the mechanism and the price.
- Observe his store. Never fix it. One thing you noticed, the number it touches, and a question about it. Not a plan to change it. It is his store until it is yours.
- "I don't know, and here is how I would find out." Say it the first time you do not know. A guess he catches costs more than an honest gap.
Use this guide over three days. Wednesday, read it once, start to finish, on the laptop. Thursday, walk the store and write. The boxes on this page save to the device you are using, so pick one device for the writing and stay on it. Friday morning, read the Friday card near the end of this page and nothing else. A Copy button at the end of the page collects everything you wrote into one block, so you can paste it into your notes app Thursday night and have it on your phone.
Winning looks like this: he leaves the store convinced you can run it on his numbers without him there.
Foundational Preparation
Round one covered the company, the values, the KPI glossary, and the Cherry Creek market. Do not reread it now. Everything below is new.
His career in two sentences
Hold these two in your head. He came up through visual merchandising at Reebok and H&M, then ran territories at TOPSHOP TOPMAN, Reiss, and The RealReal. He has been at Mejuri since March 2024, and he has only ever run stores or the people who run them.
His profile: Patrik Riverin on LinkedIn. Read it once, close it, and do not connect or message him.
What the seat looks like from his chair
Cherry Creek is the only Mejuri store in Colorado. In your own words from the 9/8 call, he is not in the state, and you would see him in person about once a month. He is hiring someone he cannot watch. The store fills online orders as well as walk-in sales, and it sells open, with no glass cases. That makes shrink, meaning inventory loss, a live question in this store every day. And Mejuri is being run toward profit, so what counts is the store's four wall, meaning what the store keeps after everything it costs, and how much of that four wall leaks out as shrink. He is likely to weigh those two before he asks about anything else.
Two things Mejuri has said publicly that are worth saying out loud
- Pay-in-four lifts basket size. Use it when he asks how you would raise the average ticket: you coach the team to offer it at the table, not at the register, so it shapes the choice instead of the payment. Do not quote a number.
- A large share of store buyers are new to the brand. So the store is where new customers come from, not only where old ones shop. Use it when he asks what the store is for: every first-time buyer you convert is a customer the website can sell to for years, so conversion, meaning visitors who buy, is worth more here than the ticket in front of you.
The Thursday homework
Go to the store Thursday as a customer, at a quiet hour. Round one told you to visit the store so you would know it; this visit is different, because you go to read it the way he will read it. Do the five looks; the method is in Strategies for the Interview, so read that section first. Then sit in the mall and write five observations, each with the number it touches: conversion, sales per hour, shrink, sell-through (how much of what came in has sold), or payroll to sales (what you spend on labor for every dollar the store sells). Before you leave, ask one stylist, as a customer, how far out piercing appointments are booked. That answer tells you how much demand the piercing chair carries, and how much STUDS could take in Q4. This is the single most valuable hour you will spend before Friday. He reads the store before you arrive; you should have read it too.
STACK
STACK is Mejuri's own selling model, and you still do not know its steps. If he raises it, say so and ask him to walk you through it; do not bluff, because he has likely trained people on it.
Interviewer Insights
This section is about one person: Patrik.
Patrik Riverin has been Senior Director of Stores at Mejuri since March 2024. His LinkedIn puts him in New York. He has spent 23 years in stores, first on the visual side and then running stores and the people who run them: Abercrombie & Fitch, Reebok, H&M, TOPSHOP TOPMAN, Reiss, The RealReal, and now Mejuri. He studied political science at Université Laval and international business at Sciences Po in Paris, and he speaks French and Spanish. The skills he lists first are Store Operations, Retail Sales, and Window Displays, and the one he is most endorsed for is Visual Merchandising.
The territory question
His LinkedIn says he runs East US, Canada, and UK. You were told on your calls that he now covers the West, and that Colorado sits with California and Washington. Both cannot be current, and neither of us knows which one is. What you can say safely: he runs Mejuri stores across more than one country, and Cherry Creek is one store in that fleet. Let him describe his own territory if he chooses to. Never correct him on it, and never quote his LinkedIn back to him.
How he thinks
This is a read from his record, not a report from anyone who has met him. Jennifer told you nothing about him, so treat all of it as likely, not certain.
- He reads a store as a business, not a display. He came up through visual merchandising, and every seat since then is described on his LinkedIn by what it was measured on: payroll, sales plans, store visits. My read: the floor, the windows, and the sightlines (what a customer sees from where she stands) are inputs to him. Sales per hour, conversion, and shrink are the outputs. A pretty floor that does not sell is a fail.
- He weighs a loss heavier than a win. He ran stores through a brand collapse at TOPSHOP, a pandemic build at Reiss, and a cost-cutting era at The RealReal. Likely he asks about shrink, payroll, and margin before he asks about growth.
- He wants the mechanism. Not "we grew sales." How. What changed on the schedule, in the stockroom, on the floor, and what it cost.
- He checks numbers. He ran monthly 360 store visits across his market at TOPSHOP TOPMAN. Someone who has done that has heard a lot of rounded-up claims. Probably he probes a number once to see if it holds.
- He thinks in systems. Repeatable beats impressive. A schedule that works in week 40 likely matters more to him than one great Saturday.
- He thinks across stores. Whatever his territory, Cherry Creek is one store in a fleet. He is likely asking two things at once: can you run this one without him, and does what you do here travel to the others.
What he listens for first
My read, in order:
- "I," with a number attached. What you did, what moved, what it cost.
- Trade words used plainly: four wall, shrink, conversion, sales per hour, payroll to sales, sell-through. Say them the way you would to your own district manager.
- The mechanism behind a result.
- What you saw in his store in the first two minutes.
- "I don't know, and here is how I would find out."
What he tunes out
- "We" stories with no owner.
- Love for the product. He has heard it from every candidate.
- Duties recited from a job description.
- Big numbers with no cost attached.
- Feelings about culture with nothing operational under them.
How Friday will likely run
- Likely: he is there before you. 10am is opening. His LinkedIn says New York, and you said he is not in the state, so he probably flew in Thursday or takes an early flight Friday. Either way, my read is that he is in the store before you are and has already walked it: windows, sightlines, the open-sell tables, the piercing area, the stockroom if he can get to it.
- Likely: he walks it with you. If he does, that is the interview, not a warm-up. What you notice and what you ask on the floor counts as much as anything you say sitting down.
- Likely: his questions are operational and specific. You were told this round covers how you coach the team to drive sales, then operations and the finer details. Expect this shape: how you build a schedule for 69 trading hours and two late nights; how you run a count in an open-sell store; what you do the week conversion drops; how you coach a stylist to sell three rings instead of one.
- Likely: he closes on time. His time is short. A short answer with a number beats a long answer with a story, and he will probably ask the next question before a long story ends.
- Likely: his answers to your questions are short. Do not read that as a lack of interest. Ask, take the answer, and move on.
What to call him
Patrik, spelled with a k. Out loud it is Patrick, the same as you have been saying. In the thank-you note, and anywhere else you write it, Patrik. Check the spelling before you send.
The one line to remember about him
He has spent 23 years learning which stores make money, and he is going to spend an hour finding out whether you know too.
What this means for you: he measures the way you have already been measured. You took a Crocs store from $6.5M to $8M against payroll, conversion, and shrink targets, and you ran two Drybar locations on one scorecard that ranked top 10 companywide for revenue growth. The man across the table has been read on the same lines his whole career: payroll against sales, targets hit or missed. You do not have to learn his vocabulary on Thursday night. You have to remember that you already speak it, and say "I."
Key Focus Areas
Round one was two roles on a phone. This round is one named operator, in person. Patrik came up through visual merchandising and became a numbers man. He will ask what you changed, what moved, and what it cost. He wants "I," not "we." He wants the mechanism, not the result.
The rule for every answer in this interview: number first, then how, then what it cost. If an answer has no number, say so and give him the mechanism. If you do not know a number, say "I don't know, and here is how I would find out." Never guess in front of a man who checks.
Built from your own record, with AI help
Check every number against your memory before Friday. He will ask you to go deeper on each one.
1. "Walk me through this store. What do you see?"
His LinkedIn shows monthly 360 store visits across his market at TOPSHOP TOPMAN and a fleet to walk at every job since, and visual merchandising is his most endorsed skill. He is asking whether you can read a store, not whether you can fix his.
You are likely to hear: "You have been in here a few minutes. Walk me through it. What do you see?"
2. "What did you personally change at Crocs, and what did it cost?"
He managed payroll against sales at TOPSHOP, and he knows a top-line number can hide a cost line. He wants what you, not the team, changed, and what you gave up.
You are likely to hear: "Crocs went from $6.5M to $8M on your watch. What did you personally change on that floor, and what did it cost you on payroll?"
SituationI ran a team of 20 to 25 at Crocs in Ontario, California, with the payroll budget on my desk and conversion, shrink, and profit as my targets.
TaskGrow the top line without letting the cost lines grow with it.
ActionFour things, each mine. I reset the visual merchandising and ran the seasonal signage and windows myself. I set a floor standard: greet, ask, fit. I held the team to it from the floor, not the office. I held the payroll line: I did not buy the number with hours, I moved hours toward the traffic. And I reworked shipment processing and the stockroom, because product was stuck in the back and my associates were back there with it. That put product on the floor faster and my people in front of customers.
ResultSales went from $6.5M to $8M while payroll, expenses, and shrink stayed inside target.
3. "Build me a schedule. 69 hours a week, seven days, two late nights."
He wants systems, not one-off saves, and a schedule is the most repeatable system a store has. It sets payroll to sales: payroll as a share of what the store sells.
You are likely to hear: "Sixty-nine hours, seven days, two late nights, tight payroll. Where do the hours go, and where do they not go?"
4. "How do you keep shrink down in an open-sell store with no cases?"
Mejuri sells fine jewelry with no glass between the customer and the product, so shrink is live every day. He fears a loss more than he wants a win, and shrink lands on the four wall: what the store keeps after everything it costs.
You are likely to hear: "Gold on open tables, no cases, a mall under renovation. How do you keep shrink down without turning the store into a vault?"
SituationAt Ulta today I own Loss Prevention and inventory accuracy. Before that I ran Lightshade in Denver, a high-compliance store where every unit and every dollar had to reconcile.
TaskKeep the count accurate and the loss down without slowing the customer or the floor.
ActionAt Ulta I run cycle counts on a calendar, and I chase variances the same day, because a miss that waits a week is a miss I can no longer explain. I train shrink mitigation into the floor team, so the greeting and the zoned floor are habits, not a policy on a wall. At Lightshade I ran audits and reconciliation on a fixed cadence and verified customer identity against the payment method at the register. That caught attempted payment fraud, which is shrink that never shows in a count.
ResultBoth stores reconciled, and the team knew why it mattered.
5. "STUDS opens in this mall in Q4. What is your plan for the piercing business?"
Services are a named responsibility, and a piercing-first chain arrives in this building before the year is out. Round one told you to raise STUDS. This round you bring the plan.
You are likely to hear: "STUDS is opening down the corridor in Q4. What do you do with our piercing book between now and then?"
SituationAt Drybar I ran an appointment business across two locations, and I grew membership 64% year over year. I hold a cosmetology license in California and Colorado, so a regulated personal service with consent forms and hygiene standards is familiar ground.
TaskFill the piercing book and lock in the return visit before the competitor is in the corridor.
ActionThree moves. First, the piercing party: a booked evening in the store with refreshments, a group of friends, and the piercers on the chairs. Each guest gets pierced, stacks a purchase from the table beside the chair, and leaves with a checkup booked. Mejuri pierces ages eight to 17 with consent, so a mother-and-daughter party is a second version of the same event. Second, the booking calendar is the number I watch, the way I watched the membership book at Drybar: how full, how far out, how many rebook. Third, the attach at the chair: the piercer places the stud, the seller beside her sells the stack. The checkup is the return visit, and the return visit is the second purchase.
ResultThe party fills the book, the chair sells the stack, and the checkup brings her back. I would hold myself to book fill, rebooking, and attach per piercing, weekly.
6. "A stylist is hitting her sales number but skipping the STACK steps. What do you do?"
STACK is Mejuri's steps-of-selling model. You do not know its steps, and round one covered why you ask rather than bluff. He is testing whether you coach to a standard or only to a number.
You are likely to hear: "One of your stylists is over her number and skips half the STACK steps. Her customers love her. What do you do?"
SituationOpen with the commitment: I would learn STACK cold in week one, and I would not coach to it until I could run it myself on the floor. At Athleta I coached associates on styling, product knowledge, and customer engagement, and held them to sales goals. The styling conversation was the standard. Some associates sold without it, on personality alone.
TaskGet the whole floor to the standard, the top sellers too.
ActionI coached on the floor, beside the associate, in the moment, not a week later. I named the skipped step and what it costs: a customer styled into a second piece buys two; a customer sold on charm buys one. I set the standard as the way this store sells, and I put the strongest seller in front of the team to run the steps, so the standard had a face the team respected. At Drybar I owned performance assessments for 40+ stylists and front desk staff, so the standard lived in the review, not only in my feedback.
ResultThe floor sold to one standard, and the number stopped depending on who was on shift.
7. "Tell me about a week where a number went the wrong way."
Every store has bad weeks. What he wants is your response time. A manager who fixes a miss the same week is one he does not have to rescue.
You are likely to hear: "Pick a week where a number went the wrong way. What did you do that week? Not that quarter, that week."
SituationAt Athleta I read the sales reporting every week to decide what to change on the floor. Some weeks the number missed.
TaskFind the cause inside the week and fix it before the next one.
ActionSame rhythm every week. I pulled the report at the start of the week and split the miss into traffic, conversion, or basket size, because each has a different fix. Traffic down: I moved hours off the slow days and onto the strong ones that same week. Conversion down: the floor set or the staffing was wrong, so I moved product forward and put my best seller on the block where the miss happened. Basket down: the coaching had slipped, so I got back on the floor beside the team. I made the change by midweek.
ResultThe adjustment landed inside the week it was needed, so no single week became a month.
8. "How do you run BOPIS and fulfillment during a holiday peak without killing the floor?"
The posting names in-store and BOPIS order flow as yours. Peak is when this breaks: the pick list grows and an associate disappears into the back.
You are likely to hear: "Second Saturday in December. Orders stacked in the queue, a line at the register, a customer at the gold table. Who does what?"
Same record as round one, one level deeper, in your own voice. The numbers are yours: $6.5M to $8M, 64%, 200%, 40+, a team of 20 to 25. What he wants to hear on Friday is the mechanism under each one and the trade-off you made to get it. Number, then how, then cost, then stop.
Key Concerns and Alignment
Round one's five concerns were a recruiter's list, and you covered them. These five are an operator's. Patrik will not ask whether the record is real. He will push on how it was made, and each row below is a place where the wrong first sentence loses the story. They run in order of how much damage each does unanswered. Every answer is written as words you can say.
| What he will push on | How you answer it |
|---|---|
| "We" language. Your resume says "directed," "drove," and "grew." Your mouth, after 15+ years of team-first habit, will say "we." His LinkedIn reads as a man who owned his own numbers at every stop. My read is that he hears "we" and asks again: what did you do. | The practice: take one story and restate it out loud until every verb has "I" in front of it. Then do the next one. When you hear yourself say "we" on Friday, stop and restate in the same breath. Not "we grew membership 64%." Instead: "I made membership a number every stylist owned. I reviewed it with each of them. I directed the client experience so the visit itself sold the return. Membership grew 64% year over year, and I owned that result on both sites." The team stays in the story. You stop hiding behind it. |
| No open-sell jewelry shrink experience. Mejuri's floor has no glass cases. Customers pick up gold and put it down. Shrink, the plain word for inventory loss, is live every trading hour, and his LinkedIn lists Loss Prevention among his skills. He will ask what you count, how often, and what you do when the count is off. | Answer in trade words, from Ulta and Lightshade. "I own Loss Prevention and inventory accuracy at Ulta today. I run the cycle counts and I train the team on shrink mitigation. At Lightshade I owned inventory control in a regulated store: audits, reconciliation, and compliance training. I verified customer identity against the payment method at POS and caught attempted payment fraud at the register. At Crocs I controlled payroll and expenses against shrink and profitability targets. Open sell changes what I count and how often. It does not change the discipline." Then ask him the store's count cadence. That turns your gap into his answer. |
| You have never been the only store in a state under a remote director. Cherry Creek is Mejuri's only Colorado store, one store in a fleet that spans more than one country. On the 9/8 call you said you would see him about once a month. He will want to know what happens in the 29 days he is not in the building. | "I ran two Drybar locations that ranked top 10 companywide for revenue growth. I could not stand in both at once, so I built the standard once and held both sites to it. Every day-to-day escalation across both came to me, and I resolved it. I know how to run a store on my own. I also know the rule for bad news: it goes up the same day, with the fix I am already running attached. You should never learn about a problem in this store from anyone but me." Then stop. If he tells you how he wants to hear from you between visits, write it down; that is your month. |
| Aesthetics without the number. His LinkedIn shows he came up through visual merchandising: Reebok, then District Visual Manager at H&M, and it is his most-endorsed skill. My read is that he does not want a pretty floor. He wants a floor that sells, and he will test whether you see it that way. Windows with no number attached read as decoration. | "I change the floor to move a number. At Crocs, visual merchandising was one of the two levers I used to take top-line sales from $6.5M to $8M. I oversaw the seasonal signage and the window displays myself. At Athleta I led the floor sets and the product launches, and I read the sales reporting every week to adjust the merchandising and the staffing. A display earns its space or it comes down." If he walks the floor with you, say the same about a fixture in front of you: what it does now, the number it touches, and then ask him what it did last quarter. Observe and ask. Never a fix, in his store, on your first day in it. |
| The moment you do not know. His LinkedIn lists Budgeting, Cost Management, and KPIs. My read is that he checks numbers, and he will ask for one you cannot have yet: this store's conversion, its sales per hour, or a STACK step. A guess he catches costs more than an honest gap. | Say this, word for word: "I do not know that number yet, and here is how I would find it. I would pull the trailing 12 months out of the reporting system on day one, and I would have it on the wall before your first visit." For STACK: "I have not been trained on STACK yet. Give me the steps and I will tell you where my coaching at Drybar already maps onto them, and where it does not." Then stop. Do not fill the silence. The sentence is the answer. |
None of the five is a qualification problem. Every concern here is a framing problem: which verb comes first, which number comes next, and what you say when the number is not yours yet. Which verb comes first is a choice you make before you walk in, and you have three evenings to make it.
Questions for Interviewer
Two of round one's questions were written for exactly this man, and you have not had the chance to ask them. Bring both. First, profit versus hours: how does he want store profit balanced against the labor it takes to cover 69 trading hours across seven days? Second, STUDS: a piercing-first chain opens in this mall in Q4, so what is the plan for the piercing book, and what part of it does the new manager own? One line each, then these six, every one aimed at Patrik and nobody else.
1"What did you see when you walked the floor this morning?"
Why it lands: He read the store before you arrived. His LinkedIn says he ran monthly 360 store visits for years, and a man with that habit does not sit in the back and wait. This turns his walk into a conversation between two operators, and it hands you his own read of the store. Listen for what he names first. That is what he cares about most.
When: First. Ask it in the opening minutes, while what he saw is still fresh.
2"What does the best store manager in your fleet do that the others do not?"
Why it lands: The posting tells you what the job is. This tells you what he actually rewards. If he says "she knows her numbers cold," you know the bar. If he says "he never surprises me," the bar is communication. Either way you have the job in his own words, and you can answer the rest of the interview to it.
When: Early, right after your coaching story. It fits the coaching half of the round.
3"When you do your monthly visit here, what do you want to see on the wall, and what does a clean visit look like to you?"
Why it lands: This is his own habit. His LinkedIn shows monthly 360 store visits across his market at TOPSHOP TOPMAN. His answer is your manual for the month between visits: the numbers he wants posted and what he calls a clean visit. Round one asked about his operating rhythm; this asks about the visit itself. Build your month backward from it.
When: Middle of the interview, once he has moved from coaching to store operations.
4"What is the store's traffic by hour, and how is the payroll budget set against it?"
Why it lands: This is the schedule question from the operator side. You cannot build a staffing model without traffic by hour, and you cannot hold payroll to sales (the labor you spend for every dollar the store takes in) without the budget logic. His LinkedIn says he managed payroll and operating cost against sales and service KPIs, so this is his language. It tells him you would start on day one with the model, not the meetings.
When: Right after the profit-versus-hours question from round one. They are one question in two halves: his philosophy, then the numbers.
5"What would you want done differently in the first quarter, compared with how the store ran the last one?"
Why it lands: You asked why the seat is open in round one; this is the half that follows it. Whatever he names is the gap between the last plan and his plan, and it is the first thing you would be measured on. A backfill after a strong manager and a backfill after a weak one give two different answers here, and you hear which one without having to ask.
When: Late middle, after he has described the store.
6"If you hired me today, what would you want done by the time you visit next?"
Why it lands: This is the close. It asks for the job without asking for the job. It puts him in the month after your start date, with you already in the job, and makes him say what the first 30 days look like. Whatever he names, answer with how you would do it: a clean cycle count, a one-to-one with every team member, the trailing 12 months on the wall. Once he has pictured you in the store, the decision is half made.
When: The last five minutes, and not before. If he closes with "what questions do you have for me," this is the one you answer with.
Do not run the whole list. One interviewer, one hour, has time for four of these plus the two from round one. Take one and three as non-negotiable: he cannot answer either from a script. Pick between two, four, and five by how the conversation runs. Hold six for the last five minutes, no matter what.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Round one's traps belonged to a phone screen. This interview sets different ones: one operator, in his own store, one on one, with no recruiter to soften a question. His LinkedIn says he has run stores since 2003. The habits that worked with Jennifer will not all work with him. The seven below are the ones most likely to cost you.
Saying "we" when he asked what you did
People directors listen for team language. He does not. "We grew sales" describes a store, and he already knows what a store does. He wants the one person in that store who made the number move, and "we" hides her.
The counterSay "I" and a verb. "I built the schedule." "I moved the steel to the front table." If the team did the work, say what you did to make the team do it: the standard you set, the check you ran. When you hear "we" leave your mouth, stop and restate.
Critiquing his store on the walk
His LinkedIn says he planned store layouts at H&M and lists visual merchandising as his most endorsed skill. If he walks you through this floor, everything you see was either his call or signed off by him. "I'd move that" is a stranger correcting the man who built it, with no numbers for this store to back it.
The counterObserve, connect it to a number, and ask. "The steel is on the first table. I read that as a traffic tool. Is that what it is doing here?" Say what you see and what you think it is for. What you would change waits until you have this store's numbers, and that is a first-week job, not a first-hour one.
Talking about the floor without a number attached
The floor is your strength: Crocs windows, Athleta floor sets, Ulta planograms. You can talk about a floor for ten minutes. To him a floor is a sales tool, and a floor description with no number in it is a description, not a result. That is an inference, but a safe one: every visual job on his LinkedIn is followed by a job with payroll and cost in it.
The counterPair every floor sentence with the number it moves. Conversion (the share of visitors who buy), average sale, units per transaction, sales per hour (what the floor sells for each hour the store is open). "The window is the traffic tool, and the first table is the conversion tool." If you cannot name the number a choice moves, do not mention the choice.
Guessing when you do not know
He checks numbers. He may ask for one you do not carry in your head: shrink at Ulta, conversion at Crocs, rebooking at Drybar. One number he can check and finds wrong makes him doubt every other number you gave him.
The counterOne sentence, always the same: "I don't have that number in my head. Here is where it lives, and I can send it to you tonight." Then name where it lives: the weekly P&L, the cycle count report, the appointment book. Then send it. "I don't know" hurts a little, once. A guess he catches undoes every other number you gave him.
Answering at recruiter length
Round one asked for two-minute answers, and that length served you with People. He is likely flying in for this, and his time is compressed. An operator asks a short question and wants a short answer, then pulls on the thread he cares about.
The counterNumber, how, cost, stop. The result in one sentence. How you did it in two, in the first person. What it cost in one. Then silence. If he wants the schedule, he will ask, and the ask is the good sign.
Treating him like the People director
Jennifer listened for values and stories, and it worked; you are the front runner. This man judges execution. The founding story, the six values named back to him, a line about the brand: to an operator that is a candidate who did the homework and has not run a store.
The counterSkip the brand talk and talk about the store. The 69 trading hours across seven days with two late nights. The open-sell floor and what it does to shrink. The piercing book. STUDS arriving in Q4. If you want one brand sentence, make it a customer fact: Mejuri has said publicly that a large share of store buyers are new to the brand, so this store is where new customers come from. Then back to the store.
Leaving without asking what happens next
With People, a candidate waits to be told. For an operator, store managers close: the sale, the shift, the week. Walk out without asking for the next step and you have shown him a manager who does not close. He will not say anything. He will remember it.
The counterAsk before you stand up. "What is the next step, and what do you need from me before you decide?" Write down exactly what he says; that is the timeline in the Post-Interview Plan.
Strategies for the Interview
He reads stores for a living. His LinkedIn says he ran the monthly 360 store visit at TOPSHOP TOPMAN, then multi-store structures at Reiss, The RealReal, and now Mejuri, across more than one country. This store is one store in that fleet, and he will have read it in his first two minutes on Friday. Then he may read it again, next to you, and watch what you see.
Reading the floor in five looks
- The entry and the first sightline. Stand at the lease line and count three seconds. What does a customer see: a table, a wall, a person, a price. That first sightline is the conversion tool, and conversion is the share of people who walk in and buy. If the first thing in view is 14K gold, the three seconds say "expensive." If it is steel at $98, they say "come in."
- Where the material ladder sits. Steel and silver near the entry with gold deeper in, or gold up front. This connects to units per transaction and average sale. Entry-price product at the door brings the walk-in; gold toward the back is where the ticket grows. Find the Puzzle rings, where 60% of buyers take three or more, and you have found where the store wants the multi-unit sale to happen.
- The services area. Is the piercing chair visible from the floor, is it busy, and is a stylist near it. This connects to the return visit. A pierced customer comes back for the checkup and the second earring, and that returning customer is exactly who STUDS wants when it opens in Q4.
- The queue and the POS. How many people are waiting, who is helping them, and what the other stylists are doing while they wait. This connects to sales per hour.
- The back-of-house door and the stock flow. Where the door is, how product moves from it to the tables, and whether online orders are packed at the counter or out of sight. This connects to shrink (inventory loss) and fulfillment. On an open-sell floor with no cases, shrink is live every hour the door is open.
How to say it out loud: three beats and no fourth. Observe: "The steel is on the first table." Connect: "I read that as the traffic tool." Ask: "Is that what it is doing for you here?" The fourth beat, the suggestion, stays in your head. He asked you to read the store, not to fix it.
Number, how, cost, stop
Every answer in this interview has the same shape. The number first, in one sentence. How you did it in two, in the first person, mechanism only. What it cost in one, because he will not believe a number that was free. Then stop. From your Crocs record:
"I took top-line sales from $6.5M to $8M. I ran the windows and the front tables against the campaign calendar, and I held a team of 20 to 25 to a conversion target every week. The cost was payroll: the floor hours came out of a budget I owned against shrink and profit targets, so every hour I added had to convert."
Four sentences. If he wants the weekly rhythm, he will ask, and that ask means the number landed. Build the same shape for Drybar membership and the Ulta count cycle before Friday.
Match his pace
He is likely unhurried, and he uses fewer words than you expect, each one carrying weight. Do not fill his silence. He is thinking, and the sentence you add to cover the gap will be weaker than the one you finished.
When he pushes back
Stay flat. Pushback here is a test of the mechanism, not of you. "That would not hold at my payroll" means "show me the same plan under different numbers." Restate the number and the how once, in the same tone. Then ask: "What would you want to see instead?" That turns his test into a conversation about his store. Never apologize for the number, never abandon it, and never argue it.
The close
The last five minutes are yours. Ask the sixth question from Questions for Interviewer: "If you hired me today, what would you want done by your next visit?" His answer is the job description he never wrote down. Then the operator's question: "What is the next step, and what do you need from me before you decide?" Then thank him by name. You say "Patrick" out loud, and that is fine. The written name is Patrik, and it goes on your notepad.
Preparation Checklist
Three days, three blocks. Nothing here repeats round one's list; that work holds.
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday morning
What he needs to see on Friday is already on your resume, one level down. At Crocs you controlled payroll against conversion, shrink, and profit and moved top-line sales from $6.5M to $8M. At Ulta you run cycle counts and same-day fulfillment on a floor today. At Drybar you hired and developed 40+ people and grew membership 64% in a year. He is not asking whether you can run a store. He is asking how you run one, in your own words, with the number and the cost attached. Say it that way and stop.
Post-Interview Plan
The note to Patrik
Same day, within a few hours, by email. Four or five sentences, written for an operator. The second sentence is the one you rewrite: it must name one thing you saw on the floor with him or one question he asked, so it could not have been written in advance. The steel table below is an example, not a script.
Patrik, thank you for the time this morning and for the walk through the floor. The point you made about the steel at the entry, that it earns its table on traffic and not on ticket, stayed with me on the drive home. If I took this seat, the first thing I would do is sit with the last eight weeks of sales per hour and the schedule side by side and build the floor coverage from that before I touched anything else. I would like the job, and I am ready for whatever you need next.
Sign it the way you sign every email. No "thrilled," no "dream role," no second thank-you. One real observation, one line on what you would do first, one plain close. He reads short messages from store managers all day; this should look like one of them.
What to write down within the hour
Open a note in the car before you start the engine.
- Every question he asked, as close to his words as you can get them. His questions are the job.
- Every number he named: traffic, payroll, team size, the store's volume, the piercing book.
- What he said about STUDS, whether you raised it or he did, and how much he had already planned for it.
- What he said about the next step: the date, the shape, who contacts whom. Your follow-up clock runs on this.
- Your own read on which answers landed and which he pushed on. The ones he pushed on are the ones he is still deciding.
If silence stretches
He is a senior director with stores in more than one country, and he may go quiet because he is somewhere else on Monday. Quiet from him is not a signal.
- If he named a date, wait one business day past it, then send Jennifer Maciocia one short note: you remain interested, and is the timeline still holding.
- If he named nothing, send Jennifer that same note at the one-week mark, Friday, September 18. Three sentences. No restating your case.
- If that goes unanswered, one more note a week later, then let it rest. Two follow-ups is the ceiling.
- Keep your other options live. You lose nothing by interviewing elsewhere while his clock runs.
The Friday Card
Read this Thursday night, then once more in the car before you walk in. Everything on it is already in the guide above.
The seat, in four lines
Store Manager, Mejuri Cherry Creek. Open sell, no glass cases, the only Mejuri in Colorado.
The posting says you report to a Multi Site Leader. You were told Patrik. He runs Mejuri stores across more than one country, and this store is one store in that fleet. Let him describe his own territory.
The posting scores the store on revenue, conversion (visitors who buy), sales per hour, shrink (inventory loss), and store profit.
This round has one purpose: a specific operator deciding whether you can run his store without help from him.
Where you line up
- You have owned the cost side of a P&L. At Crocs you controlled payroll and expenses against conversion, shrink, and profit targets, and top-line sales went from $6.5M to $8M with a team of 20 to 25.
- You have grown a services and appointment business. At Drybar you ran two locations, hired and developed 40+ stylists and front desk staff, and grew membership 64% year over year and retail sales 200%. Appointments are the same motion here.
- You run fulfillment, cycle counts, and shrink today. At Ulta you manage BOPIS and same-day orders end to end and own Loss Prevention. This store fills online orders and sells open.
- You know this market. Denver, Boulder, and you live in Superior. You know this market firsthand.
What he will push on
- "What did you do? Not the team. You."
- "What did it cost?" Hours, payroll, markdowns, turnover. Name the price.
- "How would you schedule 69 hours?" Seven days, two late nights, payroll to sales on the line.
- "What do you see on this floor?" He may walk it with you. Say what you see, the number it touches, then ask him what he sees. Never a fix.
- "What is your plan for STUDS in Q4?" A piercing-first chain opens in this mall. Your piercing party is the answer, told so he can picture it.
No scripts here. If you do not know a number: "I don't know, and here is how I would find out."
The money answer
Posted base is $85,000 to $100,000.
If he asks: name where in the band you belong and why, in one sentence, then ask how the bonus and equity are structured.
If he does not ask, you do not raise it. People owns that conversation.
Before Friday
- Reread this sheet once Thursday night. Nothing else.
- Write three "I" sentences, each with a number.
- Walk the store Thursday. Write five things you saw, good and bad.
- Patrik, spelled P-a-t-r-i-k. Say Patrick. Write Patrik.
- Arrive by 9:40. Unit 144. Store phone (720) 282-0853.
- Bring a notepad and one question you actually want answered.
You have run an $8M store, two Drybar locations on one scorecard, and a fulfillment desk. Friday is one operator asking how, and you already know how. Sound fair?
Your Work
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Ask About Any of This
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