Senior Manager, Partner Brands

Position Overview:

Title: Senior Manager, Partner Brands

Location: New York, NY

Reports to: Chief Commercial Officer

Type: Full-time; Hybrid

Compensation: Negotiable (based on experience)

We are seeking a strategic, collaborative, and results-driven Partner Brand Leader; to foster and evolve existing partnerships, while developing new category partnerships for our portfolio of brands.

Reporting to the Chief Commercial Officer (with a dotted line to our Chief Growth Officer), the Senior Manager of Partner Brands will deliver strategic recommendations, lead cross-functional teams, and establish strong relationships with external partners to drive repeat business and growth. Your initial focus will be to drive the relationship and overall strategy with new or existing clients that are looking to enter the beauty category or enhance their current beauty offering. You will be responsible for managing the relationship and business opportunities with our current and/or future retail brand partners.

Key Responsibilities:

• Identify whitespace opportunities, including new distribution, category expansion, and innovation partnerships.
• Engage our customers to identify new category opportunities that achieve their financial targets, including profit and revenue goals, target initial markup, inventory turns, etc.
• Deliver insight-based recommendations by developing a strong understanding of our client’s strategy, operating model, key programs and culture.
• Drive expansion strategy across existing and new client partners.
• Serve as the central contact for all customer communications, managing expectations and proactively solving issues and problems.
• Engage others to develop products for our customers. Lead and work effectively with cross-functional team members to achieve timelines and handoffs between internal departments.
• Have command of the latest trends and innovations in category solutions and strive to bring that excellence to our clients.
• Establish strong, multi-level working relationships with our customers based on mutual trust and integrity, enabling repeat business and account growth over time.
• Understand and ensure that our organization’s development efforts align with our customers’ marketing messaging and merchandising execution.
• Serve as the voice of the customer internally, documenting the inputs of all the other departments to ensure a cohesive creative direction.
• Understand the financial impact of decisions and manage the feasibility and cost effectiveness of products.

Qualifications:

• 6 years of experience in business development, partnerships, or strategic growth roles; preferably in beauty, fragrance, or consumer markets industry.
• 6 years of experience in client and account management.
• Proven track record closing and scaling high-impact partnerships.
• Strong negotiation and relationship management skills.
• Innate ability to operate as a collaborative, team-first leader; internally and externally.
• Strong financial and analytical acumen; P&L ownership is strongly preferred.
• Excellent communication and C-Suite/Executive presentation skills.
• Ability to operate in a fast-paced, high growth, lean environment.
• Experience leveraging AI tools is a plus.

About Tru Fragrance & Beauty:

Tru Fragrance & Beauty is a team of brand creators, a partner for retailers, and a residency for founders and young beauty brands. We have fifty plus years’ experience in the vast fragrance, beauty and wellness space, delivering paramount creative capabilities, category management and logistical excellence.

Tru Fragrance & Beauty’s portfolio includes Gen-Z favorite Le Monde Gourmand, fragrance-as-wellness brand Lake & Skye, high-performance body care brand Supersuite, and licenses including Yellowstone and Wrangler, with distribution including Ulta, Sephora EU, Nordstrom, Blue Mercury and many more.

Tru maintains a premier position as a multidisciplinary innovation engine and supplier, with a roster of A-list celebrity and retail partners, including American Eagle Outfitters, Target, TJ Maxx, and Urban Outfitters.

Tru Fragrance & Beauty operates out of Willowbrook, Illinois and New York City.