Head of Cultural Direction & Curation in London

About DROOL

DROOL is a fast-growing e-commerce startup that has become one of the world’s leading platforms for contemporary art prints. Over the last 3 years we have seen exceptional year-on-year profitable revenue growth, have been featured in leading publications (GQ, Architectural Digest, Vogue), and have amassed a community of 1M+ IG followers along the way. Our growth is supported by the backing of a US VC firm with considerable domain expertise scaling startups like Ruggable, Dr Squatch and Fabletics into e-commerce powerhouses.

Job Summary

You decide which artists, subjects and styles DROOL backs next and turn that direction into collections people want to own. The art we sell defines our brand. You'll develop a clear point of view on what belongs at DROOL, where our catalogue should go next and which artists and creative movements we should champion. That means spending time researching and embedding yourself in the creative communities shaping contemporary visual culture, discovering talent early and understanding why tastes are changing. You'll combine those insights with customer understanding, commercial evidence and your own judgement to make clear choices. Reporting to the Founder / CEO, you'll lead cultural direction and curation, working closely with our art curator and marketing and commercial colleagues. You'll remain hands-on in artist discovery, important relationships and collection development, with support for routine coordination and administration. If you love combining taste, curiosity and commercial thinking—and can turn a strong creative point of view into work that launches—this role is for you.

What you'll own

• DROOL’s cultural direction: Define and evolve the creative principles behind our artist roster and catalogue: what belongs, what is missing and where we should go next. Make confident choices about what to champion and what to pass on, balancing relevance to existing customers with opportunities to reach new audiences.
• Artist and catalogue strategy: Own the artist, artwork and collection roadmap. Identify opportunities across established work, emerging talent and more experimental directions. Guide the curator’s scouting priorities and selection decisions. Build a strong artist pipeline and take a direct role in relationships where your involvement can make the difference.
• Collections, commissions and collaborations: Develop distinctive collections, exclusive editions, commissions and partnerships with a clear creative rationale and customer proposition. Lead the creative brief, artist selection and collection narrative. Shape commercial terms with appropriate support, balancing artist relationships, differentiation and long-term value. Explore brand, partnership or other licensing opportunities where they strengthen DROOL’s direction.
• Experimentation and commercial learning: Create a manageable programme of tests for emerging artists, visual directions and collection ideas, within agreed budgets. Use customer feedback and performance data to decide what to develop, refine or stop. Assess early experiments against their intended learning as well as their sales, while maintaining commercial discipline across the wider catalogue. Recommend new formats, bundles or adjacent categories where they strengthen the artwork proposition, working with relevant colleagues on feasibility and delivery.
• Launch direction and collaboration: Work with marketing, CRM and social colleagues on collection stories, audiences and launch plans. Provide the cultural context and artist insight that make each release distinctive. Set priorities and stay accountable for moving collections from idea to launch. The curator and relevant colleagues will lead routine onboarding, artwork-file coordination and operational delivery. Guide which artists and collections deserve prominence; work with marketing and e-commerce colleagues on merchandising and performance optimisation.

What success looks like

• A more distinctive and coherent catalogue, with clear reasons behind its evolution.
• A strong pipeline of artists, collections and partnerships that existing sourcing methods would be unlikely to uncover.
• Collections and brand partnerships that unlock new business growth and attract new audiences.
• Commercial contribution from new work, assessed alongside customer response and learning from experiments.
• A reliable process that turns cultural insight into decisions and launches.

4-8 years' experience in fashion or streetwear buying, art editions, creative direction, cultural programming, or a culture-led DTC brand. You see it early. You can name styles, brands or aesthetics you called before they blew up, and explain why you backed them. You have taste and you can defend it. Strong taste and the ability to explain why an artist or idea is right for DROOL, drawing on cultural context, customer understanding and commercial judgement. You ship. You've taken products from idea to launch yourself, in a small team, without a big operations department behind you. Own it. The ability to set priorities, guide a curator and bring colleagues behind a clear creative direction. You understand drops and hype (desired). Collabs, editions, waitlists, sell-outs and community. You've run them, or worked closely with people who have. You can do a deal (desired). You've negotiated licensing or collab agreements. You understand exclusivity, royalties and rights, and you know when to bring in a lawyer.

Competitive salary. Share options in a high-growth profitable start-up. Flexible working (3 office days per week in Shoreditch, London). 25 days holiday + your birthday + a duvet day + bank holidays. Work a week from abroad. Monthly health & wellness budget (for fitness class, gym, meditation, therapy). Company retreat: trip once a year. Learning budget: for courses, books etc. 60-75% employee discount for you + friends & family.