Lead UX Designer

Alkemics is a B2B business platform enabling retailers to discover, negotiate and launch new products from their 1000+ suppliers.

In Europe alone, millions of products are launched every year, each with up to 500 attributes and made by one of 300,000+ manufacturers. Prior to Alkemics, establishing a commercial relationship required numerous back-and-forths between retailers and brands, physically (in trade shows, for instance) or pseudo-digitally (fax, email, XLS templates...) and between various teams (procurement, category management, quality, CSR, e-commerce, marketing...). Because of this painful process, it often took more than 60 days to launch a product. This situation is unsustainable at a time where consumers are demanding a broader product choice, more local products, where Amazon and Alibaba are raising the bar of omnichannel efficiency, and at a time where Lidl and Aldi are setting a standard for productivity.

Alkemics disrupted the space with a fully digital platform where brands create and share their product catalog. Retailers can explore those catalogs and run business workflows, searches or reportings to select, negotiate and list those products in their assortment. Once a retailer is on-boarded, invites are sent to that retailer’s suppliers to join the platform on a freemium basis, enabling quick network growth.

Alkemics was founded in Paris in 2012. With 98 out of the top 100 CPG manufacturers (Nestlé, Unilever, L’Oréal), the 7 largest retailers in France (E. Leclerc, Carrefour, Casino, Auchan, U-Enseigne, Cora, Metro…) and 4 of the largest UK retailers (Tesco, Ocado, Waitrose, Sainsbury) using the platform, Alkemics now holds a very strong and unchallenged position in the French and UK market. The business is now expanding internationally, starting with DACH and BENELUX. Along with international growth, the focus of the business is to leverage its platform and client relationships to build an end-to-end B2B marketplace with the ultimate vision of ordering directly within the platform.

Alkemics raised a total of $50M from tier-1 investors Index Ventures, Partech Ventures, Serena Capital and Cathay Innovation. Its latest funding round took place in April 2020, bringing in Highland Europe, a leading Growth VC. The business is made of 100 employees and is growing extremely rapidly.

Background

Online marketplaces are now commonplace for C2C and B2C markets. This trend has started in B2B sectors too, driving tremendous value and economies of scale. Today, thanks to a captive user base, Alkemics is in a strong position to “platformize” the notoriously difficult retail space. Brands are keen to have their products discovered in a more efficient and elegant way. Retailers are interested in negotiating products more quickly. Brands also want to better control the product introductions within each store.

The Alkemics Product team is on the hunt for a motivated senior product designer looking to have an incremental role in defining and creating functional and delightful solutions for the Retail ecosystem.

As a Lead Product Designer, your role will be to drive the design thinking process first within your cross-functional team, then across the whole company.

You will be part of the Product Team and work alongside a Product Manager to transform a complex B2B environment into a pleasant experience.

Responsibilities:

• Conducting customer interviews, user research and user tests
• Delivering stellar execution throughout the design flow (experience maps, wireframes, prototypes, elegant UI)
• Enhancing our user personas and personifying them
• Collaborating with the Head of Product and the Product design team in the definition of a design strategy and principles for our product, and advocating them to relevant stakeholders
• Setting deliverable quality high standards and guidelines for the Product design team
• Keeping the Product design team up to date on best practices