Senior Product Manager – Essential Oils
Meet Our Recruiter
About the Role
We are supporting a global ingredients business with the appointment of a Senior Product Manager to lead and develop its Essential Oils portfolio across North America.
This is not simply a product management role.
You will have broad commercial ownership of an established Essential Oils business, taking responsibility across P&L, trading, pricing, supplier relationships, inventory, sales support and category growth.
For someone who understands the Essential Oils market and wants the autonomy to run a category almost as their own business, it represents a significant opportunity.
The Role
You will take ownership of an established Essential Oils portfolio, responsible for its continued commercial development across the US and Canada.
Your remit will include:
- Owning category performance across revenue, gross margin and profitability
- Developing and executing the commercial strategy for the Essential Oils portfolio
- Monitoring global supply, demand and market conditions to guide purchasing and pricing decisions
- Managing trading exposure and appropriate long and short inventory positions
- Negotiating commercial terms, pricing and supply agreements with producers
- Developing strategic relationships with suppliers and manufacturing partners
- Working closely with experienced international sourcing teams
- Managing inventory levels, stock turns and contractual supply positions
- Working with Account Managers to identify and convert new business opportunities
- Supporting customer discussions through strong product and market knowledge
- Identifying new suppliers, products and opportunities to strengthen the portfolio
- Building relationships across flavour, fragrance, personal care and food markets
- Working collaboratively across Sales, Supply Chain, Regulatory and wider commercial teams
- Travelling to customers, suppliers and relevant international industry events where required
A particularly important part of the position is commercial risk management.
We are not looking for someone whose experience has been limited to back-to-back procurement. You will need to understand commodity movements, inventory exposure and how to make informed purchasing and pricing decisions in a changing market.
What We’re Looking For
To be considered, you should have genuine commercial experience within Essential Oils.
Ideally, you will bring:
- At least 5–8 years' experience within the Essential Oils market
- A background spanning commercial, trading, product management, category management or sales
- Strong knowledge of the US and Canadian market
- Experience managing pricing, inventory and trading exposure
- Demonstrable responsibility for revenue, gross margin or category profitability
- Strong supplier and customer relationship-management capability
- Good commercial judgement and the confidence to make independent decisions
- An established understanding of global Essential Oil supply markets
- A proactive, entrepreneurial and highly accountable working style
- The ability to work across international suppliers and time zones
Existing relationships at origin across markets such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil or wider South America would be valuable, although the business already has significant international sourcing capability.
Technical knowledge is also useful, but this is fundamentally a commercial leadership position.
The Opportunity
The successful person will inherit an established business rather than starting from zero.
The opportunity is to take that platform and build from it.
You will have significant freedom to shape category strategy, develop supplier relationships, identify market opportunities, support the commercial team and drive the Essential Oils business forward.
The structure is deliberately lean and entrepreneurial. There is high visibility within the wider business, access to experienced global sourcing teams and considerably more ownership than would typically be available within a heavily structured corporate environment.
Over the longer term, success will be measured through portfolio growth, gross-margin improvement, trading performance and increased customer penetration.
The preferred location is New Jersey, where the company's Essential Oils infrastructure includes blending, laboratory and commercial operations. Chicago is also an option, and remote candidates may be considered where there is a compelling industry fit.
For an experienced Essential Oils professional who wants more autonomy, greater commercial ownership and the opportunity to shape an established North American category, this is a particularly interesting opportunity.