Category Manager (Bath & Personal Care)

Job Summary

The Category Manager applies their analytical skills and business expertise to take ownership and drive growth and profitability for the category(s) while articulating a clear strategy and long-term vision. As a category expert, they will have a fundamental understanding of the products, vendors, brands and global trends driving the business. They will lead the team in evaluating, curating, pricing, promoting, and growing the brands/products in their assigned category and cultivating strong vendor partnerships that result in mutually beneficial opportunities. The role directly partners with the Director and Sr. Category Manager. As a leader on the team they will be responsible for hiring, managing, developing, and mentoring of the Buyers and Senior Buyers, and creating a cohesive, efficient and forward-thinking team. This role is the fourth step in the progression of the Merchandising team's buying structure, and is responsible for making merchandising decisions for large volume, highly visible accounts.

Job Expectations

• The Category Manager will work closely with Senior Managers, Directors and team to implement business strategies, short and long-term growth objectives.
• Lead your Buyers to strategically negotiate with vendors to secure exceptional everyday pricing, marketing & promotional budgets, special opportunity buys, growth incentives including rebates and accruals, delivery, and payment terms for large volume, highly visible accounts.
• Manage and analyze key category metrics (KPIs) to drive solutions for category performance, new and existing brands, new products, pricing, gross margin, promotions, and product life cycle while seeking opportunities for improvement.
• Continually develop and utilize strong category knowledge to build, edit and maintain current and future assortment creating market advantage while also reflecting customer needs/requests.
• Establish an action plan to capitalize on category and product innovation, industry trends, global markets, competitor offerings, consumer trends, and ways to differentiate our offering to exceed customer expectations.
• Foster relationships with large volume, highly visible existing/new vendors to drive sales, product innovation, margin growth, promotional support and maintain regular and consistent communication to ensure a clear understanding of short/long-term goals and capabilities.
• Negotiation of contracts, product evaluation, quality issues, customer service questions and create and maintain supplier, product database.
• Drive the new product/brand onboarding and maintenance process to ensure timely addition to market.
• Calculate, maintain and evaluate cost, pricing, and product adjustments in system to ensure desired mark-ups, margin and seek strategic pricing opportunities.
• Partner with Inventory Management and Planning Team in managing inventory turns, vendor forecasts, new item projections, service level, order cycles, rebate and marketing programs, special opportunity buys, and general supply chain practices.
• Manage and develop short/long-term promotional activities that are profitable and highly effective in conjunction with the Marketing Team.
• Create, review and utilize data/reports to enable in-depth analysis of category successes/challenges.
• Comply with company policies and procedures, including safety, business ethics, and standards of conduct.
• Cultivate, direct and support seasoned Buyers; enabling them to further develop and grow assigned category with tools for success.