Creative Director, Beauty & Wellness brand in City of London

£90,000 – £125,000 Full-time or Fractional London, Hybrid

About the Business

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 now 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 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 ideas 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 brand concepts that are inspiring, commercially executable and 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 ideas already formed.
• 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

• 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.
• On stage or on a panel, representing the business’s point of view at industry events and beauty forums.
• 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.
• Building the pipeline, developing concepts before anyone has asked for them.

What We’re Looking For

A creatively led thinker with a design background who has grown into insight, innovation and commercial strategy. You’ll have strong aesthetic sensibility and genuine trend authority, but what sets you apart is translating both into ideas retailers get excited about and actually buy. You’ll be compelling in the room, clear in your thinking, and deeply curious about where culture and consumer behaviour are heading. 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 idea and a compelling reason to act is exactly what this role is about. This role is probably not right for you if your creative thinking hasn’t been tested in a fast-moving retail product environment.

Why It Matters

The business already executes brilliantly. What comes next is leadership, becoming the creative force, the industry looks to, the one whose instincts set the standard. This role is how that happens.

Diversity & Inclusion: ILMJ values diversity, equality and inclusion and encourages applicants from all backgrounds and identities.