Company Overview:
At YSE Beauty, we create perfectly edited, can’t-live-without skincare products that help people stop worrying about their skin and start living life. YSE Beauty is less than 1.5 years old, but in the short time since launch we have established clear product-market fit and secured a top-tier specialty beauty retail partner (which is where you come in!).
Our team is small but mighty, made up of highly collaborative, hardworking, and passionate individuals who value each other and work together to make our (big!) vision a reality. If you are a seasoned leader with a proven track record of successfully scaling brands into Sephora/Ulta, if you’ve built out highly efficient/effective retail teams and created successful strategies to drive brand awareness, conversion and sustainable growth across retail/wholesale channels ... we’d love to meet you!
The Opportunity:
YSE Beauty is seeking an experienced Senior Director of North American Retail/Wholesale to drive growth across our retail/wholesale channels. This person will be responsible for owning/creating the strategy, building the team and leading retail execution to ensure a successful wholesale launch and a long-term, winning trajectory across major retail channels.
The Sr. Director of NA Retail / Wholesale is a key member of our executive team and will be expected to own the Retail P&L. This person is a highly strategic leader willing to take on significant responsibilities, including:
- Strategy Creation & Execution: Owning and developing the strategy for long-term retail/wholesale growth, while keeping in mind the omnichannel nature of our business.
- Steward of our Wholesale Partnerships: Managing wholesale relationships and functioning as the key account lead, particularly as we enter into new retailers, ensuring a successful and fruitful partnership
- Retail P&L Management: Full ownership of the retail P&L, balancing growth with expenses, focused on optimizing overall profitability
- Building & Leading a High-Performance Team: Recruiting top-tier talent into our very first retail, sales, and execution roles to support the wholesale launch, thoughtfully and efficiently scaling the team, and ensuring top-notch execution at all retail touchpoints.
From creating winning education/training programs/materials, to building out successful sampling/mini strategies, to working cross-functionally with internal team members + retail partners on Marketing360 plans and VM, to successfully launching products/exclusives into retail partners ... this person will be the “axis” around which our retail business revolves and the “conductor” that drives it forward and coordinates all activities that support it.
What you'll do:
P&L / Budget:
- Create, own and drive forward the strategy and execution of our first major retail launch with a major specialty beauty retailer
- Manage/own retail P&L and budgets, balancing investment/expenses with top-line opportunity while always keeping sustainable growth and profitability in mind
- Propose annual budgets for B&M/dot-com needs, tracking spending and investment to budget and reviewing all invoices/helping reconcile spend
- Work with planning/finance team to build retail forecasting and track performance, meeting all deadlines for forecasting and budgeting submissions
- Deliver against retail sales targets, staying within budget
- Proactively flag risks/opportunities and provide strategies to mitigate/capitalize on them
- Monitor, manage and optimize retail sales, gross sales & ultimately net sales through wholesale channels
- Provide monthly executive updates of sales performance/KPIs, strategy, opportunities and challenges
Strategic Account Leadership:
- Own, maintain and nurture key account relationships with our retail partner(s) to fuel the long-term support/advocacy for our brand.
- Develop and lead execution of the overall wholesale account management strategy, driving growth and longevity across retail partnerships
- Work with wholesale partner(s) to ensure best-in-class assortments, fixtures, and visual merchandising
- Advocate and negotiate brand/product placement opportunities as well as marketing levers with our retailer, working with cross-functional partners to execute
- Act as a best-in-class partner to our retailer with regard to communication + delivering on our promises - as well as thinking of ways to "surprise and delight" them
- Conduct merchandising analyses & monitor competition to make winning strategic recommendations
- Negotiate (and renegotiate as necessary) commercial terms with retailers, optimizing for profitability, placement/assortment, in-store visibility and performance, and digital/marketing support
- Own and analyze reports on retail performance/retail programs, making strategic recommendations and adjustments based on data
Build & Lead a High-Performance Retail Sales Team
- Recruit top-level talent in account management, sales, and education to ensure we have a highly efficient and effective, best-in-class retail team to fuel our long-term, sustainable growth
- Support, train and mentor the field team and account managers to ensure we optimize our retail relationships as well as offer best-in-class sales/education/training support
- Develop and implement metrics/KPIs to track the performance of the retail team and ensure alignment with company goals
Partner Cross-Functionally on Business Strategy:
- Work with cross-functional partners to ensure a cohesive brand/product and sales/education strategy across retail/ecomm channels, synchronizing efforts to maximize growth and profitability across all sales channels
- Work with marketing/PD/ops to develop strategy and manage retailer execution of sampling programs, ensuring seamless execution and excellent ROI
- Identify and bring on a VM vendor; work cross-functionally to create/continually optimize VM across all placements. Manage VM development process from brief through execution and ensure alignment with marketing, sales and education, incorporating feedback from field
- Partner closely with Marketing and Brand on Retail Marketing
- Work with marketing to take take advantage of / maximize marketing opportunities and exclusives, managing retailer feedback and approval throughout the process
- Develop a winning 360 retail marketing (inclusive of all B&M and dot-com levers, animations, events, media, digital, social and co-op strategies) to drive brand awareness and conversion
- Adapt and distribute brand materials for retailer’s in-store/dot-com needs (including marketing comps, visuals, copy, promos, samples, gratis, etc.) with brand and creative - Work with internal e-commerce, creative, and marketing teams to brief/partner on execution of marketing assets, ensuring all departments are aligned and executing to launches/calendar
- Work with operations on inventory management strategies to optimize stock levels, minimize stockouts and improve inventory turnover
- Operate as a key cross-functional leader within our organization, nurturing close and effective relationships with finance, operations, PD, marketing/creative, ecomm and more
Strategic Thought Leadership:
- Identify/stay ahead of retail/consumer trends, knowing which ones we should capitalize on versus which ones do not make sense for our brand, and recommending ways we can maximize opportunities across channels
- Track and educate internal team on competition
- Prepare retailer presentations as needed and drive ongoing TB agendas
- Contribute to and present at quarterly board meetings in front of our investors
Experience & qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree
- 8-10 years experience in retail marketing, account management and/or sales/education
- Specialty beauty retailer experience required
- Prestige skincare experience required
- Deep relationships within Sephora/Ulta required
- Up-to-date knowledge of major specialty beauty retailers’ inner workings, challenges and priorities
- Highly proficient in Microsoft Office applications (Excel, Word, PPT) and Google Suite (Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, etc.)
- Demonstrated experience building and scaling a retail team
- Demonstrated leadership capabilities (e.g., interfacing with executive team and board, etc.)
- Previous experience in a founder-facing role strongly preferred
- Experience working in a fast-paced, high-growth environment strongly preferred
- Ability to travel 25-30% of time
Skills:
- Deep knowledge and passion for the beauty industry
- Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, as well as cross-functional leadership capability; ability to “win” people over using data and strategy as well as personal charisma
- Flexibility and adaptability; ability to multitask and manage priorities, timelines and feedback in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving environment
- Ability to work effectively under pressure
- Highly organized and detail-oriented
- A positive leader who inspires action and collaboration, and who enjoys going above and beyond to optimize relationships
- A proactive self-starter who enjoys tackling problems head-on and can find creative solutions; ability to “think ahead” and plan proactively for what’s coming
- Adept at negotiation
- Calm under pressure
- Ability to toggle between high-level strategic thinking and tactical, hands-on execution
YSE Beauty is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity.
