Lindsay Sharlow
Lindsay Sharlow is a retail and e-commerce leader specializing in category strategy, merchant leadership, and business development. Lindsay serves as a Senior Business Development Manager at Temu, where she focuses on U.S. marketplace expansion, seller onboarding, and helping brands scale in a fast-growing digital retail environment. She began her retail career in 2005 immediately after graduating from college, joining Macy’s Florida as an intern. From the outset, she discovered a strong passion for merchandising—driven by the ability to see real customer reactions to product decisions. She quickly advanced from intern to Buyer in under four years, working across women’s apparel in Missy and Juniors divisions. During this time, she partnered with both national brands such as Michael Kors and Karen Kane, as well as Macy’s private label programs, building a strong foundation in assortment planning, vendor management, and fashion merchandising strategy.
In 2009, Lindsay relocated to New York to join Ross Dress for Less, where she spent the next decade developing deep expertise in off-price retail. Her work in the Juniors division centered on balancing the excitement of the “hunt” for off-price opportunities with the creation of compelling, value-driven assortments for customers. In 2019, she was recruited by Dollar Tree, marking a pivotal shift from soft goods into hardlines categories such as hardware, electronics, and arts and crafts. During her tenure, she played a key role in the company’s transition from a single price point model to a multi-price point strategy. She helped design and scale an entirely new assortment that grew from a limited 150-store test to a full chain rollout within a year, driving multi-million-dollar category growth and contributing to the department becoming one of the top-performing areas in the company.
Today, Lindsay continues to build on her evolving career in business development and retail innovation while also pursuing an entrepreneurial passion project as Founder of Life’s Easier Organized — Because Chaos Isn’t Cute, a home organization business rooted in her experience with space planning and planograms. Working fully remote, she has created greater balance between professional growth and family life, while continuing to apply her expertise in merchandising, strategy, and organizational systems across both her corporate and entrepreneurial work.
• University of Connecticut - BA, Political Science
• Donated to City of Hope Cancer Foundation in Philadelphia
What do you attribute your success to?
I think never giving up. You know, there was a few times when, especially when I moved from apparel at Ross to Dollar Tree, there was a few times I was told, do you really think that you can buy that? You've only ever bought apparel. And I was adamant in the fact that, you know, people think you're just stuck in one pigeonhole, but I relied on my background and my strength. If you are a student of your business, if you study your customer, if you study your competition, it doesn't matter if it's leggings or dresses or ping pong tables. I mean, you literally could buy it all, but you have to stay true to your customer and those core values of delivering exceptional value, delivering quality product, and be a student of your business. I think those are still the foundation, and wherever my career goes in the future, that will always remain the foundation of what drives my success.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say it's so hard because business, just in general, not necessarily retail but in general, it's such a boys club, and it makes it so difficult or challenging for women to be heard or deliver, have what they're wanting to say land and deliver appropriately. That was definitely something that I struggled with for a long time. But I think staying true to your passion of the business and driving for results, and keeping that intensity and that light burning inside of you, I think is something that is so important. But then also learning how to balance that and play the game. I think it's such a hard lesson and double-edged sword that women are faced with that can make things challenging. But to be aware of it at an early age and have some female mentors that are able to help guide you along the way, I think is vitally important to your individual success.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think, so now, having shifted and being in e-commerce, obviously one of the biggest opportunities is how quickly can you deliver quality products to the customer. I mean, Amazon has it down to an hourly science of being able to deliver, and Walmart is right behind them with technology. So I think being able to continue to strive to get there and really utilize all of the tools in our tool belt, whether it's different AI platforms to help us generate leads or new campaigns or anything along the lines of just new product ideas of how to push to the customer and get in front of them. I think being able to effectively utilize AI data, because let's be real, anybody can use ChatGPT and do whatever with it, but if you have the structure and the foundation of your company to be able to effectively utilize that, I think that is the biggest opportunity in e-commerce retail moving forward.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would say integrity and accountability are far and away the two most important things. I think if you don't have those two pillars kind of in your life, it's really hard to be able to rally the troops around you to get on your team. So I think those are definitely the two most important values. I think delivering on everything that you say and your follow through is very important. It's surprising to me because I talk to a lot of people at trade shows or at conferences and things like that, and then I follow up and people are like, oh wow, you did that really quickly. I told you I was gonna email you, so I'm gonna email you, not a month from now. I think that follow through is very, very important.