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HARRY’S TEARDOWN

I’m working with one of the most legendary brands in the personal grooming space. The firm is a privately held, family-run manufacturer with generations of brand heritage. Their products are staples in both professional and home settings, and leadership describes their brick-and-mortar position as dominant, category-defining share. The Amazon business is high-eight figures globally, most of it domestic.

There are several great reasons you could accomplish career-defining things in this role. Among them:

1./ The category never sleeps. The underlying need for the product literally grows while people sleep. All of us wake up slightly hairier than we went to bed. That’s exactly the justification Warren Buffett used to invest in Gillette, and it’s worth knowing that my client’s brand already owns the trust that challenger brands are renting one review at a time. When this company leads with its heritage, people buy.

2./ The client has the money to invest in marketing. It simply currently needs to do a better job with that. Today my client runs a 1P/3P mix across multiple internal entities, with internal teams and external partners bidding against each other on the same keywords in Amazon’s pay-for-play media marketplace. They are driving up my client’s own CPCs.

3./ The platform tailwind is real: Amazon’s global GMV is forecast to grow roughly 9.6% in 2026, roughly 3X the pace of US retail, and US retail media spend has nearly tripled since 2021 to over $107B. Meanwhile, only about 10% of brands use Amazon Marketing Cloud in genuinely sophisticated ways. My client wants to be one of the companies to prove that Amazon media lifts sell-through in the brick-and-mortar doors where they already dominate.

So, who’s the customer?

There are two of them, actually: 1.) The professional barber or salon operator, to whom the product is a totally safe and reliable tool. In the pro market, technical detail matters, education matters, and the margins are higher. 2.) The home consumer is often a mom who’s buying confidence. Her fear is botching her kid’s haircut, and the winning message is simple and reassuring. To win in this role, you’ll need to understand the psychology and sales motion of both.

About the Role

Reporting into North American leadership, you will own the US and Canada Amazon P&L on a high-eight-figure business, with a mandate to make Amazon a meaningful contributor to an ambitious multi-year growth agenda.

Your mission will be to 1.) execute the already-approved 3P-to-1P migration and agency consolidation on schedule, 2.) rebuild the merchandising engine around a truncated, hero-SKU assortment with sharply focused tentpole execution, and 3.) install full-funnel retail media (including AMC) that provably lifts both Amazon and the client’s dominant brick-and-mortar business.

The brand is healthy, the products sell, and leadership has already blessed the plan. It’s an execution and change-leadership job at the top of the maturity curve.

The executive sponsor is the President of North America, a pragmatist who has already sold the CEO and executive leadership team on this transformation. The migration plan is already mapped phase by phase by industry- and subject-matter experts. Leadership is aligned top to bottom. You are not walking into a blank page; you are walking into a runway.

You will make two hires of your own: an operations manager and an analytics manager are already budgeted. The analytics hire must synthesize data into merchandisable insight; this client has had enough weathermen. Beyond your direct hires, you will orchestrate a broad cross-functional organization that already exists around this seat: in-house paid media, channel management, content, data and BI, Canada counterparts, and the agency partner you will govern.

The org still carries some old-school sell-in habits, and the structure that built the company is evolving to match a new go-to-market. If you can walk in humble enough to learn the product from people who have spent their careers perfecting it, and confident enough to teach them how modern Amazon truly works, you will be handed more running room than any corporate Amazon leader I’ve met this year.

And so we’re clear on how your first conversations will be scored, the 100-day arc looks like this: directional impact on Prime Big Deal Days in October, material impact on the holiday window, and category share and catalog focus visibly moving the right way, all while the migration stays on schedule.

Areas of Oversight

1P Migration & Marketplace Architecture

• Execute the phased US 3P-to-1P migration plan (Canada follows; a small third-party seller-of-record program is intentionally parked), maintaining listing continuity, Buy Box integrity, and revenue during transition.
• Manage pricing risk through the migration, the single issue leadership flagged as critical, in coordination with the channel management team, so tentpole merchandising never creates channel conflict with major retail partners.
• Bring ASIN-level 1P/3P economics to every assortment decision: profit dollars per unit (not percentage margins), full vendor P&L including trade terms, co-op, freight, damage allowances, and deal funding.
• Prepare for Annual Vendor Negotiations with a data-backed narrative; industry-wide, vendor margin health scores dropped from +46% to +18% year over year, and freight/supply-chain asks lead Amazon’s 2026 agenda.

Retail Media & Full-Funnel Activation

• Consolidate all paid media into a single bucket and a single agency of record; end internal keyword bidding conflicts permanently.
• Lead the in-house paid-media team’s evolution from hands-on execution to governing the agency of record. This is one of the biggest change-management pieces of the job, and it is yours.
• Shift the media mix deliberately up-funnel as economics allow; 37% of brands are moving dollars to mid/upper funnel in 2026, including streaming placements such as Netflix inventory now buyable through Amazon DSP with Amazon audiences.
• Use Amazon Marketing Cloud to join retail distribution density with first-party data and prove omni-channel efficacy: target high-intent audiences in markets where the brand has heavy store distribution, and measure the halo on brick-and-mortar sell-through.
• Manage cost of sale with TACoS discipline, not vanity ROAS; reinvest documented efficiency gains into share-taking media.

Assortment Architecture & Merchandising

• Truncate a broad catalog into a focused hero-SKU assortment using contribution-margin tiering (CM1/CM2/CM3), with aging-based checkpoints built into the calendar.
• Build the gateway-SKU doctrine: concentrate discounts and ad spend on a handful of entry-point products at tentpole events, then cross-sell the ecosystem all year.
• Treat Prime Day, Prime Big Deal Days, and the T12 holiday window as orchestrated multi-day campaigns: pre-event audience building, sustained pacing across all days, and a documented after-action review feeding the next event.
• Speak both customer languages: technical education for the professional channel, confidence-building simplicity for the home consumer, and a growing pet category the client wants to expand meaningfully.

Agency Consolidation & Amazon Relationship Leverage

• Run the agency RFP end-state: one partner, compensated on a retainer floor plus upside indexed to growth, a structure designed to keep the agency’s A-players on the business.
• Maintain dual relationships inside Amazon (Retail and Ads are different organizations with different incentives) and know when to work each to unblock the other.
• Own vendor manager engagement, AVS investment decisions, and program access (deal submissions, betas, AMC paid features) with quantified ROI expectations.

P&L Ownership, Team & Operating Cadence

• Run the US and Canada P&Ls with a monthly executive cadence; connect laterally with international counterparts on what’s working.
• Hire and develop the ops manager and analytics manager; build a decision-support function, not a reporting function.
• Mobilize the broader cross-functional organization around the seat: in-house media, channel management, content, data and BI, and the agency partner, much of it through influence rather than authority.
• Carry the operations load personally in the short term (inventory readiness on a long import supply chain, fulfillment, catalog hygiene) until your ops hire lands.
• Bring the organization along politically: educate, evangelize, and make friends while executing a sea change.

Qualifications

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATION

• Bachelor’s degree in business or a related field, or equivalent experience.

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES – SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

• Documented evidence of moving top line, bottom line, AND category share on an Amazon business of meaningful scale. All three, with numbers you can defend.
• Evidence of using Amazon to grow a broader omni-channel or brick-and-mortar business, not just the marketplace P&L in isolation.
• Deep 1P fluency: vendor economics, AVN negotiation you personally led with quantified outcomes, CRaP mitigation, and a working point of view on when clean 1P beats hybrid.
• Real experience with Amazon Marketing Cloud or comparable clean-room measurement. You can cite a specific finding that changed a budget decision.
• Tentpole execution at the multi-day campaign level, with a defensible discounting philosophy that differs by event type.
• Agency management chops, including performance-aligned compensation design. If your instinct is percentage-of-ad-spend, this isn’t your job.
• Personal working relationships inside Amazon (Retail and/or Ads) that you can actually activate. Lots of people claim this. Few have it. We will check.
• Fluency with the modern Amazon data stack (e.g., Brand Analytics, Stackline/Profitero-class tools) as a commercial user. The analytics hire goes deeper; you set the North Stars.

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT / BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCIES

• Ability to lead through influence in a matrixed, relationship-driven organization where much of what you need is controlled by teams that don’t report to you.
• Builder and orchestrator mentality: you make two key hires of your own and mobilize a broad cross-functional organization that already exists around the seat.
• Senior-leader competencies the client formally screens for: drive for results, decision quality, strategic mindset, global perspective, ensures accountability, builds effective teams, and business acumen.
• Change-management style that asks questions and listens before implementing. New ideas delivered without arrogance.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

• High integrity; straight talk without a straight-arm.
• Merchant’s instincts: sell-out obsessed, not sell-in satisfied.
• Hypothesis-driven and comfortable being wrong in front of the data.
• Patient and diplomatic in a company mid-transformation; thick skin, warm handshake.
• Self-directed; comfortable operating before the full direct team exists.
• Energized (not exhausted) by educating an organization that’s earlier on the Amazon maturity curve than you are.

Compensation & Location

Compensation is still being finalized; early discussions centered on a $175-225K base plus a bonus tied to net sales and operating income, and the client understands that the caliber of operator this role demands may price above that band. No equity; this is a private, family-held company.

The client prefers a candidate within about an hour of their Midwest office, three days a week on site, but has been explicit that they will consider remote for an exceptional candidate. We’re only hiring a 10. For the right 10, geography is negotiable; everything else isn’t.

How to Apply

Applications for this position are being coordinated by Harry Joiner. To apply, CLICK HERE. Candidates: TEXT Harry Joiner directly at (404) 281-2025 for a packet of market research and company / competitive intel that will differentiate you in your candidacy. Our research file for this assignment exceeds 50 pages. Due to the intensely competitive nature of this search, thorough preparation with this proprietary material is strongly recommended.