Job Detail

About Coty Inc  

Coty is one of the world’s largest beauty companies with approximately $9 billion in revenue, with a purpose to celebrate and liberate the diversity of consumers’ beauty. Its strong entrepreneurial heritage has created an iconic portfolio of leading beauty brands. Coty is the global leader in fragrance, a strong number two in professional salon hair color & styling, and number three in color cosmetics. Coty operates three divisions – Coty Consumer Beauty, which is focused on color cosmetics, retail hair coloring and styling products, body care and mass fragrances sold primarily in the mass retail channels with brands such as COVERGIRL, Max Factor and Rimmel; Coty Luxury, which is focused on prestige fragrances and skincare with brands such as Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Hugo Boss, Gucci and philosophy; and Coty Professional Beauty, which is focused on servicing salon owners and professionals in both hair and nail, with brands such as Wella Professionals, Sebastian Professional, OPI and ghd. Coty has approximately 20,000 colleagues globally and its products are sold in over 130 countries. Coty and its brands are committed to a range of social causes as well as seeking to minimize its impact on the environment.

We are looking for a Director – Basic and Long Term Research Fragrance for our R&D site in Versoix, close to Geneva, Switzerland.

KEY RESPONSIBILITES

Reporting to the Vice President – Basic & Long Term Research and Technical Perfumery, Coty Luxury (a member of the Luxury Division R&D Lead Team), as the Director of Basic & Long Term research you will be leading the development of a portfolio of Fragrance innovation to serve Coty’s Industry Leading Luxury Brands.  This includes, amongst others Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Chloe, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Balenciaga Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Burberry, Joop, Davidoff, and Miu Miu.

You will be leading a team of 6 people (some of whom will also be new to Coty) based in Geneva/Versoix and Paris and establishing the culture and approaches to deliver multiple streams of Luxury Innovation to market.  The team is made up of Technologists/Formulators,  and experts in Methods, Modelling and Process scale up.  The innovation programs will deliver irresistible and unique experiences to the Luxury consumer, driving Market Share for the brand portfolio, as well as finding opportunities to reduce cost and maximise speed to market. 

You will need to be able to simultaneously spearhead innovation programs at very different stages of development both for the Fragrance category and Adjacent Luxury categories.  This will involve working in partnership with your counterparts across the Luxury R&D organisation and critically engagement with your Marketing, Consumer Market Knowledge and Supply Chain partners to understand the direction of the business and ensure their enrolment and sponsorship of the programs. 

The focus areas for you and your team include:

1. Definition and development of Long Range Fragrance Category Transformational Opportunities – The innovation that will change the way that consumers experience fragrances in the future.


2. Intellectual property strategies to appropriately protect these innovations whilst maintaining development momentum.


3. Acceleration to market of existing disruptive technology platforms including definition of the strategy to achieve this.


4. Leveraging Modelling as an enabler for the total luxury R&D programs.

Lastly, an essential part of your role will be to develop each and every individual within your team to their fullest, setting high performance standards and nurturing the diversity of talent.  You will also be responsible for anticipating how your team will need to evolve, identifying needed capabilities both within your organisation and through leveraging external partnerships (Fragrance Houses, suppliers, academia, research partners etc.) where appropriate.  Some mostly European travel will be necessary as part of the role.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS/IDEAL FIT

• Demonstrated leadership of diverse, non collocated R&D teams and motivating experts specialising in multiple different fields such as Technology Development, Process Development, Methods Development and Modelling/Simulation (amongst others).


• Track record of delivering multiple business building innovation programs to market,  spanning innovation types from Disruptive to Sustaining.  Critical experience is the successful and rapid delivery of Disruptive Innovation to market.


• Innovative and creative thinking used to identify future innovation opportunities both in the terms of what is possible technically and working with other R&D disciplines/Business teams to intersect this with what is needed by the business/desired by the consumer.  This would ideally include both immediate category and category adjacency opportunities.


• Demonstrated capacity to build and engage teams quickly and effectively and manage stake holders. (Marketing, Supply Chain, Consumer Market Insights etc.)


• A history of identifying and building productive external relationships with academia, research partners and/or digital providers would be an advantage.


• Robust understanding of budgets and demonstrable experience of sizeable budget governance.


• A passion for Beauty and Fashion is advantageous and intellectual curiosity is a must.


• Being comfortable with utilising a combination of data and gut feel/intuition to drive decisions at a rapid pace will be essential experience required in this role.