Promotions & Merchandising Advisory Specialist - East

Promotions & Merchandising Advisory Specialist - East Central

Do you love trying new things and have a passion for retail merchandising? Use that curiosity and retail know-how to help independent businesses succeed!
INFRA is hiring two Promotions & Merchandising Advisory Specialists to work hand-in-hand with our member stores to maximize the impact of our center store programs
. Sound exciting? Submit your resume and cover letter to start a conversation.

Positions are available in our South Central or East Central territories (defined below).

In this role, you will play an integral part in connecting with member stores at ground level, helping our team set a path for the future of our association. You will have the opportunity to improve each member’s unique store experience by supporting and enhancing their promotions and merchandising practices. The ideal Promotions & Merchandising Advisory Specialist thrives in a partnership role, teaching others, sharing best practice knowledge, communicating opportunities, keeping things organized, and supporting easy-to-implement changes.

INFRA Promotions Champion

• In collaboration with INFRA team, Champion members to fully utilize the benefits and opportunities of Promotional Programs (EDLP, INFRA Deals) participation.
• Support success of other INFRA strategies and programs (operational strategies, pricing recommendations, and participation agreement requirements) by helping members understand how promotions or merchandising programs align and complement.
• Lead in-store program onboarding as needed and/or reinforce orientation elements into each member situation while in store.
• Partner with store employees to create/implement tangible plans from recommendations to improve execution and impact.
• Support or lead planning, implementation, and outcome tracking of store merchandising planograms.
• Support or lead planning, implementation, and outcome tracking for new store setups, store resets, and store expansions/contractions.
• Assist staff and members with merchandising best practices by providing training, development of systems and documentation, and introduction of new-and-next ideas.
• Keep abreast of new-and-next ideas and/or exciting merchandising and promotional program best practice changes.

• Plan and perform competitive analysis with identified data-driven and anecdotal goals.
• Support outcomes with data and share story of program impact. (Member data/KPIs, promotions/store performance metrics, retail data, distribution data, and/or available trend information).
• Support and coach members toward solutions unique to their stores. Highlight value provided and the “why” a member would want to commit to recommendations.
• Collaborate with INFRA Team to develop new or improved strategies and tactics to grow association-wide participation and alignment with Promotions Programs (EDLP, INFRA Deals, New Item), including increasing member participation, consumer, and brand participation as appropriate.
• Create member-specific recommendations based on identified potential participation obstacles, performance gaps or wins, competitive analysis findings, and opportunities. Connect member feedback to INFRA team. Capture in-the-moment or anecdotal feedback and support formal INFRA feedback processes. Incorporate outcomes from feedback into future work.

• 4+ years’ experience in creating and implementing broad-scale promotions and merchandising planning, multi-store buying and resets, or digital marketing and promotion program implementation
• Retail grocery and/or natural foods experience required
• Demonstrated experience working with businesses in a consultative role or professional services partnership role strongly preferred
• Experience working with independently owned businesses strongly preferred
• Proven experience defining and applying merchandising best practices
• Skilled with a variety of technology platforms including Microsoft
  365, Sharepoint, CRMs, Project Management tools, planogram tools, or equivalents
• Proven leadership through influence. Ability to inspire others by communicating benefits/value…