Retail Merchandising & Category Strategy Manager

Milani, the Los Angeles-based market leading color cosmetics brand, was founded over 20 years ago, with the passionate belief that everyone should have the opportunity to own and enjoy luxury beauty. To this day, Milani continues to innovate for and with its diverse community of #MilaniMakers and relentlessly tests the limits of what’s available at affordable prices. Milani delivers high-end yet accessible luxury while championing inclusivity, self-expression, and experimentation through makeup.

Milani Cosmetics. Luxury that’s born inclusive, not exclusive.

Milani Cosmetics is seeking a highly analytical and creative Retail Merchandising & Category Strategy Manager.  Reporting to the Sr. Director of Merchandising, with a dotted line to the VP of Sales Strategy, this role will be responsible for leveraging data-driven insights to optimize merchandising strategies, ensuring alignment with brand goals, retailer objectives, and consumer behavior.

 The ideal candidate will lead the strategy, planning, and execution of wall merchandising initiatives.  The manager will be responsible for leveraging data-driven insights to optimize product assortments across retail channels.  This role is critical in driving efficient product lifecycle management by analyzing performance data, identifying opportunities for assortment changes, and ensuring smooth execution of product additions and deletions.

Responsibilities:

Assortment Management

• Lead the Add/Delete process through evaluation of product performance data (e.g., sales, profitability, inventory) to recommend product changes to the assortment, along with providing financial impact analysis.

• Collaborate on new item forecasting and benchmarks for product launches to develop scalable, efficient strategies that drive sales.

• Develop accurate sales forecasts that ensure successful product launches and inventory optimization.

• Collaborate with Marketing, Product Development, Sales and Operations Teams to align assortment changes with overall business objectives.

Strategic Planning and Insights

• Analyze historical sales trends, competitor data, and market data to inform assortment decisions and forecasts assumptions.

• Create and maintain dashboards and reports to track Productivity and the impact of assortment changes on sales and profit.

• Monitor SKU performance regularly to identify slow-moving or underperforming products.

• Internal reporting on door count, set sizes, POG mix and SKU harmonization initiatives.

Retail Wall Merchandising / Performance Metrics

• Design, implement, and optimize wall merchandising plans that enhance in-store visibility and consumer experience, along with the development of long-term wall merchandising strategies to meet business objectives.

• Collaborate with Sales/Marketing to align space to sales allocation and product placement.

• Ensure brand consistency across all wall merchandising displays, adhering to guidelines.

• Monitor and adapt plans based on competitive analysis and market dynamics.

• Define and monitor KPI’s to measure the success of merchandising strategies across various retail channels.

Key Skills and Abilities

• Strategic Thinking: ability to create the category management vision and translate into specific retailer merchandising principles.

• Influence: ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams from sales to marketing and finance and influence stakeholders to drive the Sales Strategy vision.

• Strong Project Management Skills: ability to manage multiple global projects simultaneously.

• Communication: ability to communicate effectively, actively, and cross-functionally to ensure thorough understanding of programs, customer needs, and competitive activity.

• Proven experience building positive working relationships and working successfully in cross-functional teams with varied levels of understanding of analytics.

• Strong analytical skills, retail experience, and the ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in business, analytics, marketing, or related field.

• 5+ years of experience in merchandising, analytics, retail strategy roles (Beauty industry preferred).

• Proficiency in data analysis tools including (e.g., Excel, Tableau, Power BI); familiarity with retail data systems (e.g., Nielsen, IRI, POS) and experience with analytics platforms.

• Experience in and daily utilization of ProSpace Space Planning Software (JDA) and building Retailer specific planograms.

• Strong understanding of retail merchandising principles and consumer shopping behaviors.

• Proven track record of driving sales growth through data-driven merchandising stra