General Merchandise – Category Manager

General Merchandise – Category Manager

Requirements

• 5+ years of total merchandising experience
• 5+ years’ experience negotiating contracts with vendors in similar business models
• 5+ years’ experience leading cross-functional teams and initiatives with a high degree of complexity
• 5+ years developing strategies to mobilize the business to achieve goals and outcomes using innovative solutions
• 5+ years influencing with and without authority
• 5+ years leveraging data to support strategic plans and return on investment
• 5+ years’ experience working with a team to prioritize work based on skills, needs, timelines, etc.
• 5+ years’ experience engaging and inspiring a cross-functional team to reach optimal business outcomes together
• Highly responsible and accountable for building strong business value
• Consistently leads by example and contributes to overall team success through a positive mindset and resiliency
• Expertise leveraging MS Office Suite, including advanced Excel and PowerPoint capabilities
• Extensive knowledge of retail business operations, including front store merchandising
• Proven track record of the ability to work collaboratively with internal and external business partners to deliver ROI from effective targeting and communication strategies
• Regular and reliable attendance during normal working hours, as established by the leader
• Bachelor’s degree, OR equivalent experience
• Travel requirements – up to 20% travel expected

Responsibilities

• Achieves revenue and margin goals by accomplishing market share growth. Manages all profit and loss targets to include sales, contribution of margin, inventory turns, GMROI and DOS
• Leverages data, insights, and analytics to influence stakeholders and makes recommendations as appropriate
• Vendor management, collaborates and negotiates with manufacturers and vendors ensuring strategies achieve in-year sales and margin goals to promote long-term success and partnership
• P&L management forecasting and pulling levers to drive P&L
• At the direction of the Senior Category Manager or DMM, fully embraces organizational improvement initiatives, acting as a change agent with one’s own team and peers and partners
• Establishes and enforces policies and procedures that promote ethical behavior, compliance, and best practices
• Facilitates collaboration between different departments to promote a cohesive and integrated approach to achieving organizational goals
• Drives change agility in self, team and network
• Measures retention and key performance indicator results on an ongoing basis and provides recurring readout to senior leadership in partnership with cross functional business leads
• Leverages a results-oriented mindset, using metrics to monitor improvements
• Develops and manages a standardized set of views that are used to internally monitor macro-level trends and key drivers of each
• Influences at all levels – up to and including cross-functional SVPs
• Excellent written and oral communication skills-strong presentation skills required
• Develops and cultivates collaborative teams within support areas of Marketing, Legal, Digital, Inventory, Pricing, Promotion, Finance, Store Brands, Store Design, Supply Chain, and Store Operations
• Maintains a supplier relationship for JBP yearly planning, new item reviews and negotiations
• Fosters and shape innovation by bringing ideas to market in an agile way, while balancing growth potential against financial risk for the broader team
• Drives the team to deliver best-in-class merchandising experiences across in-store channel for {insert categories} and lead strategy for {insert categories} catalog, including leading negotiations with all suppliers
• Develops growth and oversee category strategies rooted in an understanding of the customer and trends
• Assigns appropriate timelines and accountabilities for items, empowering the team to drive action steps to completion
• Leverages thought partners (Senior leaders, corporate partners, peers, team, etc.) as needed to create and revisit the strategy
• Navigates ambiguity and change to achieve goals despite potential obstacles
• Follows up on strategic initiatives and KPI performance
• Drives assortment decisions through planograms and features
• Drives promotional activity strategy, slotting, forecasting and negotiations

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong executive presence and business acumen
• Superior ability to influence without authority and build relationships quickly
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including presenting to large audiences and senior leaders
• Balancing, coordinating, and executing multiple competing priorities across multiple stakeholders
• Delegation and assignment of responsibilities within a project to appropriate stakeholders
• Influencing without authority to align multiple stakeholders to a common goal and hold teams accountable for delivering results
• Framing complex problems and developing solutions that address multiple interests with minimal guidance or direction
• Identifying risk and mitigation strategies to ensure success
• Using critical thinking and strategy to balance multiple stakeholders needs (e.g. patient, customer, executives, business owners, enterprise)
• Demonstrating strong attention to detail and follow through with commitments
• Pivot priorities quickly to adapt to and meet changing business needs
• Exhibit/model professional behaviors that are consistent with collaborating with senior leadership and that demonstrate a strong bias for inclusion, collaboration, building trust, driving for and delivering results as well as supporting innovation and change
• Continuously accept feedback and where appropriate, create thoughtful recommendations to adapt governance strategy, involving appropriate stakeholders where needed for alignment
• Deliver high quality professional communications, presentations, responses, and analyses on a wide range of requests by working quickly, independently and with minimal direction
• Communicate clearly to small and large groups internally and externally to lead complex projects to completion
• Collaborate cross functionally with leaders and colleagues’ enterprise wide to solution, implement, and drive results, including execution support where required
• Plan, develop, and execute short- and long-term goals