Melbourne | Full Time | On Site | Genuine Pathway to Ownership

The Opportunity

This is not a traditional Retail Director appointment. It is an opportunity for an accomplished senior retail executive to join an established luxury jewellery house, lead its next phase of commercial growth and, importantly, work towards becoming an owner of the business.

Privately owned and founder-led, the business has been built over decades around exceptional product, highly personalised service and enduring client relationships. It has an established showroom network, loyal customer base and strong foundations from which to grow.

The Founder is now considering the long-term future of the business and is looking for more than an executive. They are looking for a future business partner.

Joining in a senior leadership capacity, you will work closely with the Founder to understand the business from the inside out, take increasing ownership of commercial performance and help define its next chapter. For the right individual, there is a genuine intention to create a structured pathway to equity and ownership.

This presents a rare opportunity for a senior leader who has spent their career building successful businesses for others and is now ready to invest their experience, energy and potentially capital into something they can ultimately call their own.

The Role

Your initial mandate will centre around the commercial leadership of the retail business, but your influence will extend well beyond the showroom floor. You will operate as a senior leader across the organisation, bringing greater commercial discipline, identifying opportunities for growth and progressively taking responsibility for the performance and future direction of the business.

Working directly with the Founder, you will:

- Take ownership of retail and commercial performance across the business
- Develop and execute strategies to grow revenue, profitability and enterprise value
- Lead and optimise the showroom network,



identifying opportunities for future growth
- Establish meaningful KPIs, forecasting and commercial reporting
- Elevate the luxury client experience, clienteling and CRM strategy
- Build the capability, accountability and performance of the leadership and retail teams
- Identify opportunities across partnerships, events, customer acquisition and retention
- Influence product, merchandising, inventory and range decisions through a commercial lens
- Partner across marketing and digital to strengthen the end-to-end customer journey
- Improve systems, processes and operating disciplines to create a more scalable business
- Protect the heritage and luxury positioning of the brand while identifying where it needs to evolve
- Work alongside the Founder on longer-term business planning, succession and transition of ownership

Over time, the expectation is that your remit will broaden as you build a deep understanding of the business and demonstrate your ability to lead it.

The Skillset

You are likely already operating at Retail Director, General Manager, Commercial Director, Head of Retail or equivalent level within a sophisticated luxury, premium retail or consumer business.

This opportunity is specifically suited to a senior leader with the financial capacity, either personally or through access to finance, to invest in the business. The pathway to ownership could commence immediately or within the early stages of the appointment. You have proven that you can lead people, grow revenue and manage complex retail operations. But at this stage of your career, you are looking for something more than another senior corporate position.





You want skin in the game.

Commercially astute and entrepreneurial, you understand what drives the value of a business—not simply its top-line sales. You think about profitability, cash, inventory, people, productivity, customer lifetime value and sustainable growth.

You will bring:

- Significant senior leadership experience within luxury, jewellery, fashion or premium retail
- Proven ownership of revenue, profitability and business performance
- Robust P&L;, budgeting, forecasting and financial capability
- Experience leading multi-site retail operations and senior teams
- A sophisticated understanding of luxury customers, clienteling and service
- The ability to identify and execute commercial growth opportunities
- An entrepreneurial, owner-led mindset
- The confidence to challenge, influence and make decisions
- The emotional intelligence to partner successfully with a Founder through a period of transition
- A genuine desire and capacity to explore financial investment into the business as part of a future ownership pathway

The Offer

Few executive appointments offer the opportunity to influence not only how a business performs, but who ultimately owns and leads it. This is an opportunity to inherit the foundations of an established luxury brand without starting from zero, while bringing the commercial leadership, ambition and fresh perspective required to take it forward.

The Founder is committed to finding the right long-term successor and is open to structuring a pathway that enables that person to progressively acquire an ownership position in the business.

For a commercially ambitious senior leader who is ready to move from executive to owner, this could represent the defining move of their career.

If you have spent your career creating value for other people's businesses and are ready to start building equity in one of your own, we would love to hear from you.

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📌 Retail Director (Melbourne)
🏢 The Talent Mill AU & NZ - Designer, Luxury, Fashion Retail Recruitment
📍 Melbourne