Project Manager, Brand Updates

Merchandising

Our merchandising team is constantly building brands, starting trends, and developing entirely new product categories. These experts roll up their sleeves and advise our brands on the best way to bring our clients what they crave—and what they will be craving soon. Our product pipeline is so robust and exciting that many of the items that will be most in-demand in our stores next year don’t even exist yet. And our merchants don’t stop at selection—they bring the assortment to life through breakthrough curation and storytelling across our stores and digital properties.

Your role at Sephora: The Project Manager, Brand Updates, is responsible for the project management of the brand update process. This involves extensive coordination between the brands, fixture companies, graphic companies and cross-functional partners.

As a Project Manager, you will be reporting to the Manager.

In addition, you will:

Milestone Management:

• Daily maintenance of the Update schedules. Ensure projects are added and edits are made in a timely manner.
• Manage multiple brands/categories, become the key leader in all cross functional projects involving that department.
• Manage brand relationships with the team and strive for continued improvements and relationship growth.
• Lead weekly update meetings and conference calls with internal and external teams, ensuring fixtures and product land in store on time.
• Send outside vendor’s appropriate files (distribution lists, update grids) and track each update to ensure milestones are being met once projects have kicked off.
• Enforcement of pushing in store dates when deadlines are missed by the brand.
• Calculate weekly store workload and ensure that the Workload Optimization Team has accurate labor hours for total operational workload planning.
• Participate in annual and seasonal planning meetings for the brand, contributing solutions and meeting budget expectations.
• Post final instructions, tracking, and store tasks to store intranet with assistance from the Specialists.

Design Development:

• Approve all planograms and instruction sheets to ensure they meet the Sephora requirements before the update ship to stores.
• Ensure coordinating guidelines are received in full and on time and passed to appropriate partners.
• Leads proto reviews in partnership with Vendor, speaks to merch ops standards, fit/ function, updatability, and viability in store.
• Travel is often required for prototype review attendance.
• Provide feedback for test/prototype store and fixture designs as they are established.
• Develops an extensive fixture knowledge for the department within the brand(s) they are managing.
• Participate in monthly team store visits to execute Updates.

Key Partner Collaboration:

• Support in executing cross-functional strategies & initiatives for the brand
• Retrofits/Store Planning directives
• Store Design Directives (new store prototypes, new fixture designs)
• Merchandising Directives & strategies
• New Store/Procurement strategies
• On-boards new partners and cross functional teams to Sephora Merchandising Operations policies, procedures, and standards

Maintenance and Continuous Improvement:

• Work with Specialist to identify update and global issues. Determine and define corrective action plans if needed.
• Elevate issues from calls to Updates partners, Merchants, and other internal partners.
• Identify opportunities for improving brand and vendor relationships (cost savings, influencing service levels) through management of the Vendor Scorecard program.
• Work directly with updates team and procurement on maintaining and updating Vendor Scorecard documents and process
• Demonstrate our Sephora values of Passion for Client Service, Innovation, Expertise, Balance, Respect for All, Teamwork, and Initiative.

We’re excited about you if you have:

• 2-5 years’ project management/creative management experience.
• Self-starter, high degree of initiative and independence, but also able to work with teams from different departments/various levels within Sephora, outside vendors, and agencies.
• Excellent communicator, superb verbal and written communication skills.
• Logical thinker and excellent problem solver.
• Strong organizational skills, able to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Action oriented, works with a sense of urgency and very proactive.
• Strong interpersonal skills, approachable and flexible.
• Excellent computer skills - MS Office, Smartsheet and Adobe Suite a plus.
• A passion for retail is a plus
• Must be able to travel independently and handle physical setup of visual displays as needed.