Senior Category Manager

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Job description

Snr Category Manager

Full-Time

Reports to: Vice President of Category Management and Creative Services

About Us

Leading Consumer Goods E-commerce Company that provides an "Endless Aisle" solution for mass market e-commerce customers and marketplaces through product development, exclusive brands, global sourcing, and drop shipping. The Company produces a wide array of product categories: functional and decorative home goods, pet, toys, sporting goods, event supplies, tools and more. We are based in Lorain, OH and we support a hybrid work model balancing work from home with in-office collaboration time.

Our ideal Candidate

You are an experienced and passionate product-focused e-commerce category manager ready to not only develop and lead business plans, but a team of people as well. You love product and thrive on setting realistic yet ambitious business plans and knocking them out of the park. Developing and driving product strategy plans is exciting to you. You are absolutely motivated by seeing your work drive traffic, conversion, and profit. You dive deep into the assortments you manage to seek out opportunities to maximize, build upon and test new products. You are not afraid to experiment & react quickly to successes and failures to capitalize or try something new.

You are an experienced product developer. You have worked directly with vendors, agents, and trading companies to bring product to market. You know how to communicate your ideas and parameters to third parties, negotiate initial costs, evaluate samples and drive to finalization. You move quickly and seek to evolve cumbersome processes because speed to market is key. You're used to working with partners and have a track record of collaborative efforts that have made processes faster and more efficient.

Our ideal candidate loves information, is a seasoned Excel Wiz, and is quick to learn how to use new tools. New platforms to gather important data that aid in strategies and decision making are fun for you to learn and use.

Responsibilities

• Develop Sku level demand-sales plan based on historical data, in-stock position, macro impacts, market trends, etc.. rolled to sub department, department and in total.
• Monitor Sales vs. Plan and reforecast in partnership with Inventory Planning and Sales Team, Review forecast & PO placement plan on existing items and new items & provide feedback to planning
• Identify product development needs, work with vendors to seek options and adjustments. In accordance with the Sales Plan, provide direction to in-county contacts to gather samples,
• costing, MOQ, lead-time etc. As samples are confirmed, drive cross functional review of samples, features and benefits, compliance related issues, retail price, creative / brand positioning / needs, launch timing, etc.
• Initiate Sku creation
• Award programs to vendors within vetted matrix. Provide feedback to sourcing on vendor / capability needs & vendor / agent performance
• Research market & suggest whole sale and retail pricing to sales team, use suggested retails to drive negotiations
• Seasonality - Partner with sales on product promotional plan
• Consistently monitor Reviews, Ratings, by Key Account and Action by product / sub department. Take action depending on the results of ratings and feedback from reviews: quality issues, assembly issues, content improvement opportunities, additional product opportunities, etc..
• Identify discontinued skus based on poor sales / margin performance

Qualifications

• Proven track record of developing and beating planned sales targets
• 8+ years product development experience
• 5+ years in a leadership role
• Excellent communication skills, including executive presentation skills
• Self-directed with the ability to work in a fast-paced environment with accountability for multiple departments
• Solid project management capabilities with the ability to organize and manage multiple projects simultaneously from inception through execution
• Advanced in Excel
• Proficient in Power Point
• Bachelor's Degree