Beauty, Consumer & Retail Executive Search.
From prestige beauty and luxury to FMCG, food and drink and the retailers that bring them to market, we place the leaders who build desirable brands and profitable businesses. Every search is partner-led by people who know these categories, the channels and the talent.
trusted by:
What we cover.
One practice, six connected markets. Each has its own commercial model and talent pool, and we work across all of them.
Beauty & Personal Care.
Prestige and mass beauty, skincare, colour cosmetics, fragrance, haircare and wellness. Commercial, brand, product and category leadership across every channel.
Luxury & Premium.
Luxury fashion, accessories, jewellery, watches and premium lifestyle. Leaders who protect brand equity while driving commercial growth.
Consumer Goods & FMCG.
Fast-moving consumer goods, household and personal care, and the multinational and challenger brands competing for shelf and share.
Food & Beverage.
Food, drink, alcohol and hospitality. Commercial and operational leadership across brand owners, producers and service-led businesses.
Retail & Ecommerce.
Multi-site retail, department stores, specialist retail, DTC and marketplaces. Leaders who can run stores and digital as one business.
Consumer Services & Wellness.
Service-led consumer businesses, health and wellness, and the experience-driven brands redefining how people shop and live.
Leadership roles we recruit.
We operate exclusively at Director to C-suite level. Across beauty, consumer and retail, the roles we are most frequently retained to fill include:
For large-scale leadership build-outs or transformation projects, our Exec-Project service provides a dedicated, scalable search solution. For senior leaders needed on a flexible or interim basis, our Interim & Fractional Leadership practice delivers impact immediately. For hiring below Director level, PW Talent extends the same sector expertise across the full talent spectrum.
Our world of difference.
24/7 AI-sourcing, powered by PW Edge.
Every search is powered by PW Edge, our proprietary talent intelligence platform. Nine intelligence modules, 28+ live data sources, dual-model AI. It reaches beyond the obvious names to surface leaders traditional search misses.
Explore PW Edge →Two decades in these categories.
Jenny has spent 25 years building relationships across beauty, luxury, consumer and retail. That network is not something a generalist firm can replicate, and it is why our shortlists land first time.
Retained. Never contingent.
Every search gets dedicated resource, a defined methodology and a named partner who owns the outcome. We do not work multi-agency contingency.
Built for precision. Guaranteed.
Brief to shortlist in 45 days, hit on 95% of mandates. Psychometric profiling via Assessio AI. Every placement guaranteed for 6 months at Director level and 12 months at VP and above. 92% of our clients return.
What triggers a leadership search.
The businesses we work with rarely come to us because everything is going smoothly. There is usually a catalyst. The five we see most often are:
New market and channel entry.
Launching into a new region, into travel retail, or into a new retail channel needs leaders who have opened that door before and know the buyers on the other side.
Investment, exit and consolidation.
PE investment, acquisition or preparing for exit creates urgency to build a leadership team that can deliver the plan and stand up to diligence.
The DTC and omnichannel shift.
Moving from wholesale-led to direct-to-consumer, or making stores and digital work as one business, demands commercial leadership fluent in both.
Brand repositioning.
Premiumisation, a move into new categories, or rebuilding brand equity after a period of discounting all need leaders who can hold brand and commercial in the same hand.
Margin and cost pressure.
Rising input costs, tighter retailer terms and shifting consumer spend force businesses to rethink pricing, range and operating model, and often the leadership with them.
The beauty, consumer and retail talent landscape.
The leadership these businesses need is changing faster than the categories themselves.
Beauty has become a growth engine.
Prestige and indie beauty continue to outperform, and the competition for commercial and brand leaders who have scaled a beauty business internationally is fierce. The talent pool is small, well paid and rarely on the market.
DTC changed what good looks like.
Leaders now need genuine fluency in customer acquisition, retention, data and margin management, not just retailer relationships. The best commercial minds can hold wholesale, DTC and marketplace economics at once.
Retail is a two-sided business.
Stores and digital are no longer separate channels with separate leaders. Businesses are consolidating them under single omnichannel leadership, and that profile remains genuinely scarce.
Premiumisation is reshaping FMCG.
Consumer goods businesses moving up-market need leaders who understand brand building at premium price points, which is a different discipline from volume-driven FMCG management.
Sustainability moved from function to boardroom.
Credible sustainability and sourcing capability is now expected at leadership level rather than delegated. Boards want commercial leaders who can build responsible supply chains without sacrificing margin.
We track these shifts through our client work, our network across the sector, and ongoing research through PW Edge. Every search is informed by where these markets are heading, not just where they have been.
What our clients say.
Frequently asked questions.
Beauty, consumer & retail news.
Live headlines from across beauty and retail, updated automatically.
Lead in style.
Whether you are scaling a beauty brand, entering a new market, rebuilding a retail leadership team or preparing for investment, we would welcome a conversation. No commitment, just a genuine view of your market and the leaders in it.
Get in touch