Job Description

As the Head of Wholesale at Madison Reed, you own the wholesale P&L end to end and the relationships that drive it, across a portfolio that now spans prestige specialty, mass, off-price, club, professional distribution and international. This is a builder's seat, not a steward's. You will be as comfortable opening a retailer portal and building the model yourself as you are presenting the three-year plan to the C-Team.

Madison Reed's wholesale business has changed shape. What was four national accounts is now a portfolio of channel types spanning prestige specialty, mass, club, off-price, professional distribution and international across North America, the UK and the Middle East, each with its own economics, terms and buying rhythm. Your job is to run all of it as one portfolio rather than as a collection of accounts, to decide where the next dollar of trade spend and shelf advocacy goes, and to build a team that can carry the next set of doors as well as the current ones.

Reporting directly to the Chief Commercial Officer, you will lead a team of wholesale leaders responsible for our retailer partnerships. You partner closely with the SVP, Business Development, who originates new partnerships and hands them to you at first purchase order.

The position is full time and remote, with up to 30% travel from home including retailer visits, store manager shows, industry events, team meetings, quarterly business meetings and company-sponsored events.

The base salary range for this position is between $195,000 and $205,000. At Madison Reed, we aim to pay competitively. Factors which may affect starting pay within this range may include geography/market, skills, education, experience, and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

About You

You operate at both altitudes. You can present a three-year portfolio strategy to the C-Team in the morning and rebuild the trade-spend model yourself in the afternoon. You do not wait for Finance to tell you what the margin did.

You run a portfolio, not a list of accounts. You are comfortable deciding that a shelf-space fight at one retailer is worth less than a pack-size change at another, and defending it with numbers.

You are fluent with AI as an operator, not an observer. You use it to get to a sharper answer faster, and you set the standard for how your team does the same.

You act before you are asked. You surface the risk in the quarter before it lands in the forecast.

You carry the relationship personally. Buyers take your call because of what you have done with them, not because of your title.

You own the planning calendar, not just the number. The Innovation Kitchen three-year plan, joint business plans, retailer train-the-trainer programs, the Marketing annual plan for wholesale and retail, and the annual budget process all run through you. You build them and you influence them rather than receiving them.

Responsibilities

Financial Ownership

• Own the full wholesale P&L: revenue, margin, trade spend and profitability across every door and every channel type.
• Build and defend the annual plan and the three-to-five year portfolio strategy, including which channel types we invest in, which we hold, and which we exit.
• Personally own the trade-spend model. Know where every dollar of promotional and co-op investment is going and what it returned, and cut what is not working.
• Partner with Finance and Channel Demand Planning on bottom-up revenue planning from POS down to revenue, and own the forecast you sign.
• Own OpEx management for the wholesale organization. Build the annual budget, manage headcount, travel, trade shows and program spend to plan, and own the variance story.

Portfolio and Channel Strategy

• Run a portfolio that spans prestige specialty, mass, club, off-price, professional distribution and international across North America, the UK and the Middle East, and set explicit strategy for each channel type rather than a single wholesale strategy applied uniformly.
• Own the channel-conflict policy with Amazon, DTC and the Hair Color Bars: explicit pricing, promotional and assortment rules, agreed at the portfolio level.
• Set assortment and pack architecture by channel type with Product Development and Merchandising, including exclusive product and channel-specific packaging where it earns its place.
• Work with the SVP, Business Development on new doors, and own them from first purchase order forward, including the scaling plan and the internal readiness to support them.

Retailer Leadership

• Serve as the senior Madison Reed relationship for our largest partners. Lead joint business planning with Ulta, Target and Walmart personally.
• Lead annual market meetings and line reviews, and set the negotiation strategy for terms, space, promotional calendars and new items.
• Drive visual merchandising and planogram enhancement at every retailer. Advocate for space, better fixtures and secondary placement, and hold the set to what was agreed.
• Visit stores. Walk the set, check the planogram against what we were promised, and come back with what you saw.

AI and Intelligence Standard

• Own the wholesale intelligence standard. Every JBP, line review and C-Team brief is built on predictive analysis rather than a recap of what already happened.
• Set the expectation that your team works at Madison Reed's AI operating levels and hold it.
• Sponsor the Retailer Intelligence system: weekly per-retailer signal briefs, pre-JBP intelligence packages, and a running competitive timeline.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Drive alignment with Supply Chain and Planning on forecast accuracy, in-stock rates and the inventory needed to support off-price and club volume without starving the core.
• Partner with Marketing on retailer media, shopper marketing and go-to-market launch plans, and bring the creative and audience learnings our DTC business pays for into retailer media.
• Partner with the Education team on channel-specific education, including field leader conferences and professional-channel training.
• Partner with Product Development on long-lead planning internally and on the three-year innovation plan, so the wholesale assortment is shaped before it is set rather than inherited after.
• Partner with Digital Product on the wholesale tooling and reporting stack.
• Own the annual influencer plan for retail partners with Marketing, tied to the retailer calendar and measured on sell-through rather than impressions.

Team Development

• Lead, coach and grow a team of a Director, a Senior Manager and a Manager, and build the bench for the next stage of the portfolio.
• Give each leader a clear book and a number, and hold them to it.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree; 12+ years of progressive experience in beauty, cosmetics or CPG, including at least 5 in a strategic sales leadership capacity rather than purely sales execution.
• Proven P&L ownership at scale in an omnichannel model, with a record of hitting and exceeding plan.
• Experience across more than one channel type. Prestige specialty plus at least one of off-price, club, or international is what this portfolio actually requires.
• Established relationships with senior decision makers at major beauty retailers. Ulta Beauty experience strongly preferred.
• Strong financial acumen, including the ability to build and interrogate the model yourself in Excel or Looker rather than commissioning it.
• Demonstrated fluency using AI tools in commercial work: analysis, forecasting, competitive intelligence and executive communication.
• Exceptional negotiation skills and the ability to influence across a matrixed organization.
• Entrepreneurial, decisive, and comfortable with ambiguity in a business that is changing shape.

Big on Benefits

The Perks? Glad you asked…

• Comprehensive Healthcare
• 100% Company Paid Short and Long Term Disability
• 401k Participation and Equity Grants
• Continuing Education Contributions
• HSA Employer Contributions and FSA Options
• Parental Leave Program
• Commuter Benefits
• Responsible Paid Time Off Program
• Complimentary Madison Reed Products + Discounts on Hair Color Bar Services
• Company sponsored events
• But wait, there’s more…

We are Madison Reed.

We’re disrupting a $50 billion industry.

Since 2013, we’ve offered our clients the option to truly own their beauty with a revolutionary choice—your place or ours? Home or Hair Color Bar? Our professional hair color is truly omnichannel, with the option to order or subscribe through our website, pick up in-store at our Hair Color Bars, or make an appointment at one of our Hair Color Bar locations (over 20 & growing). At our Hair Color Bars, clients can choose from a variety of color services from licensed cosmetologists—permanent hair color, roots only, hair gloss, highlights and more. With our men’s line launched in 2020, we’re shaking up the $50 billion hair care industry with products that continue to raise the bar for doing hair at home.

We live our values.

Here at our San Francisco headquarters and in every Hair Color Bar, we truly live our values—Love, Joy, Courage, Responsibility, and Trust. Our values inform everything we do, from how we treat our clients to how we treat every member of our fast-growing team. Our founder & CEO, Amy Errett, has fostered a one-of-a-kind culture based on transparency, accountability, and fun; where diversity and inclusion are of utmost importance and every team member feels supported to succeed.

We are hair color that breaks the rules.

Our commitment to the ultimate client experience, paired with our dedication to product innovation and the latest beauty technology, has attracted a devoted, consistently-growing base of fans, converts, and color evangelists. We love what we do—and it shows.

Join us in our mission to live life colorfully and make personal care more personal.

Where applicable we comply with the Fair Chance Ordinance, and we will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. All qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the ordinance and state law. We value inclusion and access for all candidates, and we are pleased to provide reasonable accommodation as needed to complete the interview process. Please contact hiring@ madison-reed.com to make a reasonable accommodation request. Requests must be submitted prior to your scheduled interview

Information for Recruiters: Madison Reed only accepts resumes directly from candidates. Madison Reed does not accept unsolicited resumes from staffing vendors, including recruitment agencies and/or search firms, and does not pay fees to any such vendors for any unsolicited resumes.

Madison Reed. is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to recruiting, training, compensating and promoting our employees regardless of race, color, religion, sex, disability, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender or any other protected classes as required by applicable law that might make us unique or different. As a company, we are dedicated to reflecting the diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion found in the communities we serve. Inclusion is at the heart of what we do, from the way we craft our job descriptions, to the values we espouse daily.