Project Manager

Project Manager at Larustic About the role Larustic is an Abu Dhabi fragrance and gifting house, and our year runs on a calendar that does not bend. Exhibitions open on fixed dates. Ramadan arrives whether the collection is ready or not. A new product only counts once it is made, packed and in front of a customer. This role exists so those dates hold. You will be the person who knows what is happening across every event, collection and launch at any moment, and who spots the problem while there is still time to fix it. You will work directly with senior leadership and sit in the middle of design, production, retail, sales and finance. What you will run Every project at Larustic falls into one of five streams. You will own the plan for all of them. Events and festivals. Every exhibition and festival we join is its own project: stand design and fit-out, permits and vendor paperwork, daily stock allocation, staff rosters and briefings, sales tracking, and a proper wrap-up afterwards. Shows behave differently. Some build slowly and explode in the last two days, others peak on the first weekend, and the plan has to follow that. When two events land back-to-back in different emirates, you make the handover work. Seasonal collections. Ramadan is our biggest moment, and behind it sits a long list of products that each need a concept, artwork, materials, packaging, production and photography, all moving in parallel with different people and partners. You will own the master tracker and chase every stage. The season starts earlier each year, so the plan gets rebuilt every time, never copied. New product development. From brief to approved design to manufacturer to first production run. That means managing designers, artists and factories, protecting our designs, and signing off samples before anything goes into volume. Team readiness and training. A launch is only as good as the people selling it. You will make sure every new hire and every event team is trained on the products, the Larustic way of serving a guest, and the story of gifting before the doors open. Campaigns and sales pushes. Online launches, promotions, corporate gifting programs. Each one is planned backwards from the day it goes live, with a sales target every owner can see. Key responsibilities • Project planning. Define scope, goals and deliverables with senior leadership for every event, collection and launch. Turn "we should be at this festival" into a plan with owners, dates and a sales number to hit. • Timeline management. Keep one master calendar across all projects, plus a live tracker for each one in a tool the team will actually use (Asana, Monday.com or Jira). Work backwards from fixed dates, and flag collisions months ahead, not days. • Resource allocation. Coordinate our in-house team, part-time event staff, designers, artists, manufacturers, printers, logistics and venue organisers. The same stock cannot be at two events, so you decide what goes where and when. • Risk mitigation. Run a live risk log. The usual suspects: a supplier running late, artwork arriving late, stock running short, back-to-back events, contract terms that quietly limit future events, and staff gaps on peak days. Every risk gets an owner, a trigger date and a plan B. • Stakeholder communication. Hold a regular status meeting, send short and honest updates to leadership, and give each team a clear brief. Report to partners and finance when they need numbers from us. • Budget tracking. Track spend against budget on every project: stand, production, staff, logistics, marketing. Compare the cost of each event with what it sold, so leadership can see which ones are worth repeating. • Quality assurance. Check designs, samples, packaging, stand looks and the guest experience before anything goes public. If it does not feel like Larustic, it does not ship. • Project reviews. After every event and launch, write up what sold, what cost, what went wrong and what to change. The next plan starts from that review. Your first 90 days • Days 1 to 30: learn the house. Get to know the products, the people, the partners and the calendar. Work a live event on the floor, because you cannot plan one well without having stood in one. Collect every tracker, contract and timeline that exists today • Days 31 to 60: take real ownership. Run one live event and one product stream from start to finish. Put the master calendar and the risk log in place, and get everyone using the same tracker. • Days 61 to 90: run it your way. Lead the next major event or collection milestone with your own plan, then present your first project review to leadership. How we will judge success You are doing this well when leadership knows where every project stands without having to ask. • Every event opens on time, fully stocked and fully staffed. • Collection and product milestones land on their dates. • Spend stays inside the approved budget, and any overrun is flagged before it happens. • Each event and launch hits its sales target, or we understand exactly why it did not. • Every project closes with a written review and real numbers. • What we are looking for • Experience. 5 to 6+ years as a Project Manager or in a similar role. Time spent on events, retail, luxury, fragrance, FMCG or product launches will count for a lot. • Education. Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Computer Science or a related field. • Methodologies. Solid grounding in Agile, Scrum, Kanban or Waterfall, and the judgement to pick the right one. A festival with a fixed opening day needs a different approach from a product pipeline that runs all year. • Tools. Comfortable with Jira, Asana or Monday.com, and quick to set up a simple tracker that a busy retail team will really update. • Languages. Fluent English. Arabic is a strong advantage for working with local suppliers, venues and authorities. • Soft skills. Leadership, time management, problem-solving and clear communication, as described below. Who thrives here  You stay calm when the plan changes at nine the night before an event, and you already have a plan B in your pocket. You say "this will slip" early and plainly, because you know bad news is cheap on Monday and expensive on Friday. You like people. The role runs on getting designers, factories, sales staff and executives to move in the same direction without raising your voice. You also have taste. You can walk a stand or look at a gift box and tell what is off before anyone says it, because the details are what our guests remember. Compensation & Benefits Salary: AED 12,000–15,00