Mall Excellence Manager - LUXE

Role: Mall Excellence Manager

Division: Luxe Division

Location: Woodmead, South Africa

Reports To: National Sales Manager

About L'Oréal Luxe

At L'Oréal Luxe, we curate the world's most prestigious beauty brands—including Lancôme, Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, and Kiehl’s. Our mission is to provide our consumers with unique, deeply personalized, and highly experiential products and services. We do not just sell luxury beauty; we craft unforgettable moments of self-expression.

The Opportunity

As the Mall Excellence Manager, you will be the chief architect of our physical brand presence and operational execution across premier shopping malls. This is a dynamic, high-visibility role bridging strategic business analysis, high-impact event execution, store team coaching, and luxury brand experience.

Operating as a dedicated specialist for our top-tier mall locations, you will work in close partnership with our Area Managers—empowering them by deep-diving into these high-value doors, performing rigorous diagnostic assessments, and identifying untapped commercial opportunities to capture market share.

In this role, you will act as an Operational Catalyst and Turnaround Specialist—deploying targeted interventions to optimize underperforming boutiques alongside our field teams. Crucially, you will build and nurture influential, high-level relationships with our key retail partners, lead the end-to-end planning and execution of spectacular brand awareness events, and serve as an active coach and mentor on the floor, equipping our Beauty Advisors with high-impact sell-out strategies.

Key Responsibilities

1. Area Manager Support & High-Value Door Deep Dives

• Strategic Collaboration: Partner closely with Area Managers as the dedicated mall specialist, collaborating with them to analyze high-performing and complex doors within the country's premier shopping centers.
• Door-Level Deep Dives: Conduct rigorous, deep-dive diagnostic assessments of top-tier doors to uncover underlying commercial performance drivers, visual merchandising gaps, inventory challenges, and local consumer behaviors.
• Co-Created Action Plans: Formulate and propose targeted commercial strategies and tactical action plans in alignment with Area Managers to drive localized sales performance and secure dominant market share.

2. Retail Partner Relationships & Strategic Alliances

• Relationship Management: Build and maintain strong, collaborative, and influential relationships with key retail partners, including department store managers, floor managers, and retail group executives.
• Operational Alignment: Collaborate closely with retail partner management to align on operational guidelines, staffing support, shared space policies, and joint in-store initiatives.
• Maximizing Shared Opportunities: Leverage partner relationships to secure premium in-store positioning, favourable visual merchandising placement, and exclusive co-marketing or database opportunities.

3. Market Share Analysis & Strategic Growth

• Top-Tier Mall Audits: Conduct comprehensive, data-driven business analyses of our top-performing mall locations to evaluate brand performance, market penetration, and competitive positioning.
• Identify Market Share Opportunities: Map local market dynamics, beauty consumer behaviours, and competitor footprints within premier malls to identify strategic opportunities to capture and increase L'Oréal Luxe’s market share.
• In-Mall Visibility: Optimize existing promotional zones, digital screens, and mall-owned communication channels to drive high-value foot traffic directly to our boutiques and counters.

4. Brand Awareness Events & ROI Optimization

• Strategic Event Planning: Conceptualize, plan, and execute high-profile brand events, mall atrium takeovers, and luxury retail animations designed to maximize brand awareness and reach new luxury consumers.
• Flawless Execution: Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of events—including budget management, agency briefings, cross-functional collaboration with brand teams, and on-site setup—ensuring a flawless luxury execution that reflects L'Oréal’s high standards.
• ROI Optimization: Define clear KPIs for every event and activation, measuring performance against key targets (such as sales generated, customer acquisition, and brand reach) to ensure a strong commercial Return on Investment (ROI).
• Mall Co-Marketing & VIP Events: Partner directly with mall marketing teams to integrate our events into mall-wide loyalty programs, high-spending VIP databases, and seasonal promotional calendars.

5. Turnaround Excellence, Coaching & Sell-Out Enablement

• Performance Optimization: Serve as the division's primary "Turnaround Specialist" for retail locations; systematically diagnose underperforming stores, identify root causes, and implement swift, corrective action plans.
• Beauty Advisor Coaching: Provide regular, high-impact on-the-floor guidance and coaching to Beauty Advisors (BAs) on advanced luxury sell-out strategies, cross-selling, up-selling, and relationship-based clienteling.
• In-Store Business Management: Mentor and empower BAs to run their counters as their own businesses—coaching them on stock awareness, visual hygiene, tracking daily/weekly sales targets, and local database management.
• Campaign & Event Translation: Work together with Store Managers, Area Managers, and BAs to ensure that mall-wide promotions, animations, and brand events are seamlessly translated into high-conversion, premium in-store sell-out.

6. Strategic Reporting, Competitor Intelligence & Future Opportunities

• Monthly Performance Feedback: Prepare and deliver a structured monthly business review to the National Sales Manager, providing comprehensive feedback on mall-level sales performance, footfall trends, and key commercial drivers.
• Competitor Landscape Analysis: Deliver rigorous monthly competitor intelligence reports mapping competitor activations, promotional events, store openings, and innovative visual merchandising trends to keep L'Oréal Luxe ahead of the curve.
• Future Opportunity Identification: Act as a forward-looking strategist, identifying and presenting future commercial opportunities, untapped event collaborations, and upcoming retail trends to capture additional market share and elevate our physical presence.

7. Retail Experience & Visual Excellence

• Brand Representation: Ensure all retail spaces, boutiques, and counters maintain the absolute highest standards of luxury merchandising, cleanliness, and visual appeal.
• Campaign Execution: Oversee the flawless roll-out of product launches, seasonal animations, and global visual merchandising guidelines across all mall locations.
• Innovation & Experiential Retail: Bring "retail theatre" to life, creating interactive and immersive touchpoints that surprise, delight, and build lasting emotional connections with luxury consumers.

Who You Are

• A Collaborative Specialist: You possess a high level of interpersonal sensitivity, enabling you to partner effectively with Area Managers, offering expertise, business deep-dives, and supportive intervention strategies without disrupting established field lines.
• A Master Relationship Builder: You are highly collaborative and possess exceptional interpersonal and negotiation skills, allowing you to easily navigate conversations and build trust with major retail partners and department managers.
• A Strategic Turnaround Specialist & Coach: You possess a natural ability to step into complex retail environments, diagnose commercial and operational issues, and deploy coaching interventions that immediately uplift store teams and sales.
• A People Developer: You are passionate about mentoring retail talent, breaking down complex commercial goals into executable daily sell-out tactic