Creative Director, Beauty & Wellness Brand - #2102036

• London
• Fractional - 3-4 days (in central London)
• £90,000 - £125,000 FTE

This is a fast-moving, commercially sharp business that creates, designs and sources standout beauty, wellness and lifestyle products for leading international retailers — from value and mass retail through to premium and specialist beauty.

Ambitious and already executing brilliantly, the business is ready for its next chapter: becoming the creative and trend authority the industry looks to first. The one that sets the agenda, not follows it.

THE ROLE

This is a rare creative leadership role built around one central idea: this business should own the creative and trend conversation in beauty and wellness.

We're looking for someone with a hands-on design background who has evolved into a broader creative and insight-led role — someone who understands aesthetics deeply, but whose real superpower is spotting what's coming next and turning that into design concepts retailers want to buy.

With accountability for an in-house insights and design team, you'll shape a distinctive point of view on where beauty and wellness are heading, and translate that into concepts that feel genuinely ahead of the curve.

Crucially, you'll know what it means to proactively bring ideas to a buyer rather than wait to be briefed. That instinct — to create opportunity rather than respond to it — is central to what we need.

This is not a follower role. It's a shaper role.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Set the creative direction. Build a distinctive point of view on emerging trends, aesthetics and cultural shifts before they reach the mainstream.
• Create compelling concepts. Develop branding concepts that are inspiring, commercially executable, technically innovative and genuinely ahead of where the market is going.
• Shape the innovation pipeline. Build proactive platforms and category propositions so the business always arrives at customer meetings with design concepts already formed.
• Elevate creative executions. Write brilliant briefs, push concepts further, sharpen the thinking, edit ruthlessly and create persuasive presentations — making sure everything that leaves the business feels like it came from the most creatively ambitious team in the industry.
• Elevate how the business shows up. Position it as the creative partner retailers want to think with, not just the supplier they order from.
• Inspire internally. Bring energy and creative ambition to teams across product, design and sales.

WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE DAY TO DAY

On any given week you might be:

• In the room with retail buyers, opening their eyes to a category opportunity they hadn't yet considered.
• Leading a new business pitch, providing the creative hook that makes a prospective customer excited to work with you.
• Deep in a trend and insight session, shaping what's emerging culturally and commercially into a clear, distinctive perspective.
• Turning a trend or cultural signal into a real, costed, executable range a buyer can order.
• Growing the business's presence externally — representing its point of view at industry events and beauty forums, building a reputation as the business that sees what's coming next.
• Building the pipeline, developing concepts before anyone has asked for them.

This is a role with genuine external visibility. The right person will enjoy being a public-facing creative voice for the business — at customer meetings, industry events and wherever the conversation about the future of beauty is happening.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• A creative thinker, trend junkie with a design practice background who has grown into insight, innovation and commercial strategy — but isn't beyond jumping in to help with design occasionally.
• You'll have strong aesthetic sensibility and genuine trend authority, but what sets you apart is translating both into design concepts retailers get excited about and actually buy. You'll be compelling in the room, clear in your thinking, and deeply curious about creative currency and design as a problem-solving tool.
• You'll have worked with retail product and understand the difference between responding to a brief and proactively creating one. Walking into a buyer meeting with a fully formed design concept and a compelling reason to act is exactly what this role is about.

ILMJ VALUES DIVERSITY, EQUALITY AND INCLUSION AND WELCOMES APPLICANTS FROM ALL BACKGROUNDS AND IDENTITIES.