Account Manager, Grocery/Food

Maesa•Bentonville, AR

19h•Hybrid

About The Position

The next gen beauty company, Maesa is transforming the industry by incubating and growing meaningful, innovative brands and making prestige beauty accessible. Maesa believes beauty ignites inspiration, creativity, imagination, and connection, sparking new ideas and possibilities, and meeting unmet consumer needs. Through best-in-class design, formulation, brand creation and marketing capabilities, Maesa delivers new, better and different products with an unsurpassed speed to market. Maesa works with a variety of retailers to create and launch brands across beauty and wellness categories. The current portfolio includes Kristin Ess, Hairitage by Mindy McKnight, Fine'ry, Being Frenshe, and Mix:Bar among other brands. For more information, visit www.maesa.com. Reporting to the Director of Customer Development for the Grocery channel, this role offers the opportunity to join a dynamic, passionate team dedicated to growing some of the industry’s most exciting beauty brands. As the Grocery/Food Account Manager, you will serve as the primary liaison between Maesa and our retail partners, playing a key role in managing and expanding the business. You’ll build strong relationships with Kroger, Meijer, Albertsons, Publix, H‑E‑B, and other key food retailers, overseeing product sell‑in and driving impactful promotional programs that deliver profitable results. Your responsibility will include managing the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) at the customer level and ensuring alignment across both internal and external teams. This is an opportunity to work closely with a variety of stakeholders - buyers, associate buyers, merchandising specialists, inventory analysts, supply chain partners, and marketing teams – both at the retailers and within Maesa’s network of partners. This role will be responsible for managing select brands along with a broker within the Grocery/Food portfolio, including Hairitage, Kristin Ess, Koze Place, Fine’ry, and MIX:BAR. The position requires comfort navigating a range of business discussions, such as sales forecasting, trade spend management and overseeing the overall profitability of the portfolio. This is a primarily remote role with periodic travel based on business needs. Preferred locations include North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Texas.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a related field
5+ years of experience in account management, CPG, or beauty.
Recent, hands‑on experience in the Grocery channel or comparable retail sectors is required.
Experience in merchandising, retail, or buying is strongly preferred.
Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to negotiate and influence cross-functional teams and external partners.
Analytical: A strategic, data‑driven mindset with the ability to manage multiple priorities and thrive in a fast‑paced, dynamic environment. Proficiency in Excel and analytical tools (Power BI, Tableau, etc.) to track performance, identify opportunities, and optimize sales strategies.
Storyteller: Able to see the connectivity between data, trends and how to use them in building go-forward strategies/business cases that can deliver against internal business and external customer objectives.
Initiative: Motivated, proactive, and able to work independently as well as part of a team.
Thought leadership: A passion for the beauty industry and a deep understanding of consumer trends and behaviors in the beauty space.

Nice To Haves

Experience with 1World Sync is highly preferred but not required.

Responsibilities

Full execution and optimization of sales plans to drive net sales & market share growth
Develop and nurture strong relationships with all relevant stakeholders including our retail, distribution, and internal partners.
Develop and execute negotiation strategies that strengthen retail partnerships while driving sustainable growth and profitability.
Collaborate with multiple internal stakeholders, balancing the needs of the brand with demands of the customer to deliver win-win scenarios, leaning on experts across stakeholder groups, and instilling followership in efforts to win with a highly dynamic/evolving customer
Be the primary contact and liaison with your accounts. Be an expert of the full brand portfolio, being able to speak fluently about the brands’ product offerings.
Be knowledgeable about competing brands and products at the specific customer and across the marketplace.
Lead annual business planning using data-driven insights, leveraging POS analytics (i.e. IRI, Circana) and internal sales data to drive strategic decision-making.
Coordinate with Business Analysts and Operations on special projects for promotions, and incremental purchases.
Responsible for accurate forecasting of monthly sales by brand and items.
Serves as “voice of customer” to the company to address customer needs and accomplish goals and objectives, including launch of new items and optimal 4P execution
Lead customer meeting and presentation preparations as well as account administrative responsibilities including: Maintenance of items (SKU) information, updates, pricing, etc.
Implement new items and planogram updates
Completion of all paperwork and forms needed by each account i.e. new items setup, add/deletes, conversion kits and prepacks where a is not assigned
Maintain store list & distribution history
Lead analytic assessment with available data sources i.e. customer POS or syndicated data to develop customer presentation/stories
Utilizes internal/customer business systems to manage and maximize plans.
Regularly reconciles deductions/payments and updates promotional plans to remain within budget