Ecommerce Jobs: FullBeauty Brands seeks a Director of Online Marketing, SwimsuitsForAll (New York, NY 10004)

One of the things I love about my job is that it gives me an opportunity to learn about new niches and subcultures. I’ve written job postings about guitarists, survivalists, bow hunters, motorcycle enthusiasts, pet parents, sneaker heads, cheerleaders, equestrians, fly fisherman, reality TV binge watchers, and more. This week I was surprised to learn that plus sized women are neither a niche nor a subculture, but rather a MAJORITY (by a mile) of the US market for women’s clothing.

Refinery29 reports that 67% of American women were plus size (size 14/up) even though they only account for 2% of the bodies represented in the mainstream media. Bloomberg estimates that the market for plus size women’s clothing exceeds $20 billion, and most retailers simply ignore it – or turn their noses up at it.

Obviously, there’s a major opportunity here. You’d think there’d be a company that’s proud to serve this market.

As one of the best kept secrets in retail, FullBeauty Brands is an American plus size women’s and men’s apparel and home goods holding company based in New York City. Originally Lane Bryant, FBB was founded in 1901 in New York City. In 1924, the firm launched its mail order business with its first fashion catalog. In 1941, the mail order business moved to Indiana where the company fulfills catalog and online orders from its fulfillment centers in Indianapolis and Plainfield. In 1999, the company’s call center was opened in El Paso, Texas.

In February 2013, the company was purchased by Charlesbank Capital Partners and Webster Capital. In 2015, the company rebranded itself, it was previously known as OSP Group. In October 2015, FullBeauty Brands was acquired by Apax Partners.

FullBeauty Brands’ direct marketing DNA is evident in everything they do for the plus-sized consumer: FBB’s passion and purpose revolves around making the plus-sized consumer feel better about themselves because of their relationship with FBB. Other well known brands might dabble in this space, but FBB actually exists soley to serve this customer. FBB knows how plus sized people think, what motivates them, what they fear, what makes them mad, what their frustrations and dreams are, and MUCH more.

In aggregate, FBB’s brands have a sizable share of this underserved market, and its high-growth digital business is well on its way to making FBB a digital first company. This role is with FBB’s swimwear brand, SwimsuitsForAll.

The idea behind swimsuits for all is simple: make the world a better place to swim in, one perfectly fitting, amazingly flattering swimsuit at a time. Since 2005, SFA’s unique perspective on female beauty has made it a leader in swimwear for curvy women. SFA is grounded in the idea of accessibility: It creates high quality swimwear with superior construction, innovative design, and high-end styles and sizes 4-34, not always well represented on store racks.

As a well-established online retailer, SFA’s website is state-of-the-art. There’s a feeling of humanity through every step in the process. From the copy on its product pages, to the styles it chooses, to its world-class customer support and hassle free returns and exchanges – everything SFA does comes down to one simple principle: To make shopping for a swimsuit as enjoyable as wearing one.

When you get right down to it, this job is about smart customer acquisition, sharp cross selling and upselling, and savvy customer reactivation. There are a lot of great initiatives happening at SFA, and you will be in the thick of it all. We will expect you to bring to the table proven ways to improve customer productivity and grow the customer file at a sustainable cost.

There’s a lot of potential to explore social advertising and Amazon FBA, among other things. The next several months will see the possible introduction of new agencies for SEM, SEO, and affiliate. You’ll be involved in there assessment and management. Data is your friend, and you’ll be expected to dive into the data to assess who’s buying what, when, where, how, and WHY.

Ultimately, you’ll be responsible for planning and implementing innovative online marketing campaigns to maximize demand and ROI for SwimsuitsForAll. Reporting to SFA’s VP of Ecommerce, you’ll be driving revenue through email, affiliate partnerships, paid and natural search plus other forms of web marketing. You’ll research and track new trends in online technology, establish and manage relationships with web vendors.

You’ll be expected to stay on top of the latest UX trends for both desktop and mobile — and we’ll look to you to know how these channels can be combined to increase conversion rates and AOVs.

Which leads me to SEO …

Given that Google is shifting to a mobile first index, you’ll be expected to understand how SFA’s content should be adjusted for mobile — then prioritize the factors that are important to GOOG’s new mobile first index. We all know how important mobile is and it’ll be up to YOU to make sure SFA is taking full advantage of this opportunity – which includes Facebook.

As usual, we spent a ton of time on the phone with this client teasing out exactly what you’ll need to KNOW and DO to hit the ground running in this role. Some of the things we can share with highly qualified candidates include …

1. The “real” background requirements for this position, along with the top five things all resumes MUST have to be considered for the role.
2. The top five problems that exist due to this position being open. These are the little fires you will be expected to put out during your first month on the job. Every job has these — whether your recruiter wants you to know about them or not!
3. What your average day / week will look like in this role. There’s what you read in the standard job posting … then there’s reality. We’ve got the reality.
4. The top KPI’s that will determine your success in this role. In a nutshell: How you keep score.
5. The major projects you’ll need to complete by Day 100 to be considered a home-run in this position. We’ve got the lowdown on how you can plug-and-play and drive REAL value in this job.

We have a massive amount of proprietary intel to share with qualified candidates. Our industry research for this assignment exceeds 100 pages! Be sure to TEXT me, Harry Joiner, for this info at (404) 281-2025.