Digital Merchandising Manager

About Us

The Freeman Company is a global leader in events, on a mission to redefine live for a new era. With a data-driven approach and the industry’s largest network of experts, The Freeman Company’s insights shape exhibitions, exhibits, and events that drive audiences to action. The integrated full-service solutions leverage a 99-year legacy in event management as well as new technologies to deliver moments that matter.

Summary

We're looking for a data-driven, detail-oriented Digital Merchandising Manager to own the end-to-end merchandising experience across our e-commerce site. In this role, you'll shape how customers discover and shop our products - from homepage curation and category structure to search, filtering, and recommendation logic - while driving measurable improvements in conversion, engagement, average order value, and overall site performance.

You'll build and execute merchandising strategies for key selling moments (launches, promotions, other campaigns), continuously test and refine layout, badging, and placement strategies, and use performance data to make both real-time adjustments and long-term planning decisions. This role sits at the intersection of merchandising, analytics, and cross-functional collaboration - you'll partner closely with Digital Product, UX, Marketing, and Creative teams to ensure a cohesive, on-brand shopping journey, and you'll regularly present performance insights and strategic recommendations to leadership.

This position will support our Commerce group under our Technology Services team. It is eligible to work a hybrid schedule, generally requiring work in-office and/or show site 2-3 days per week. The ideal candidate will be based out of any of the following locations:

• Dallas, TX
• Chicago, IL
• Las Vegas, NV

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Owns the day-to-day merchandising of the e-commerce site, including product placement, category organization, homepage curation, and search/navigation optimization - accountable for the resulting conversion rate, AOV, and sell-through outcomes.
• Develops and executes merchandising strategies for key selling periods (new launches, promotions, other) with accountability for executing against targets.
• Owns analysis of site performance data (conversion rate, click-through, bounce rate, sell-through) to identify opportunities and adjust merchandising in real time and via long term capability planning.
• Owns the site search, filtering, and recommendation logic strategy - accountable for product discoverability performance and for evaluating, selecting, and managing on-site search/merchandising platforms (e.g., Algolia, Luminate).
• Owns the A/B testing roadmap and governance: defines hypotheses, prioritizes the test backlog, and owns reporting of results and resulting merchandising decisions
• Owns product content standards (imagery, copy, attributes, metadata) - sets quality guidelines and is accountable for auditing and enforcing them across all product pages.
• Owns the merchandising performance narrative to leadership: prepares and delivers recaps, risk call-outs, and investment recommendations directly to senior stakeholders.
• Leads prioritization and direction-setting for a cross-functional working group (Digital Product, UX, Marketing, Creative) to execute the merchandising roadmap - sets the agenda and priorities this group works against.
• Monitors competitive and industry trends and is accountable for translating them into concrete merchandising strategy changes.
• Collaborates with digital product and UX teams to design frictionless discovery and buying journeys.
• Collaborates with Marketing to ensure digital merchandising supports campaign calendars and promotional pushes.
• Supports IT/Engineering on technical implementation of merchandising and search tooling as needed.

Education & Experience

• 7-10 years of total professional experience in retail, e-commerce, buying, or a related commercial/analytics field.
• Including 5+ years specifically in digital/e-commerce merchandising, with demonstrated progression in scope and ownership (e.g., increasing responsibility for revenue-driving decisions, cross-functional influence, or team/process leadership).
• Strong analytical skills; comfort working in Excel/Google Sheets, and familiarity with tools like Google Analytics, Power BI, Tableau, or similar.
• Experience with Salesforce e-commerce platform along with work management platforms such as Workfront, Azure, Figma and ADO.
• Understanding of on-site search and merchandising tools (e.g., Algolia, Luminate).
• Excellent cross-functional communication skills - you'll work closely with Marketing, Creative, Product and IT.
• A strong eye for product presentation and customer experience; UX experience a plus.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment while managing multiple projects simultaneously.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Merchandising, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration and influence skills, with experience partnering directly with sales leadership.
• Trade show, retail, hospitality or homegoods industry experience preferred.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite.
• Experience with SQL or basic data querying.
• Familiarity with Site Search best practices.
• Familiarity with SEO best practices as they relate to product/category pages.

Travel Requirements

Travel up to 25%

What We Offer

The Freeman Company provides benefits that aim to empower our people and their families to thrive mentally, physically, and financially. These are a handful of the types of programs and benefits our full-time people may be eligible for. There may be some variances in specific benefits across regions.

• Medical, Dental, Vision Insurance
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Paid Parental Leave
• Life, Accident and Disability
• Retirement with Company Match
• Paid Time Off

Diversity Commitment

At The Freeman Company, our commitment to diversity and inclusion is helping us to create not only a great place to work, but also an environment where our employees, our customers and our communities around the world can reach their goals and connect with each other. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status and other characteristics protected by federal, state or local laws.