Senior Category​/Merchandise Manager

The Senior Category Manager is the strategic owner of their business unit and respective product categories. This role is responsible for shielding and growing market share against major competitors by curating a high-performance product mix, driving private label expansion, and leveraging data to optimize pricing and inventory.

• P&L Ownership: diverse responsibility for sales revenue, gross margin dollars, and inventory turn targets.
• Competitive Strategy: Develop defensive and offensive strategies to compete with major e-commerce and retail players while maintaining the specialized trust and authority of the Valley Vet brand.
• Digital Merchandising: Effectively collaborate with the e-commerce team to continuously improve the online presentation, searchability, and conversion optimization of your categories.

• Portfolio Management: Curate a balanced assortment of national brands and high-margin private label products.
• Private Label Development: Aggressively identify gaps in the market to launch Owned Brand products that protect margins and build customer loyalty.
• Trend Forecasting: Utilize external market data and internal analytics to predict shifts in the space (e.g., telemedicine integration, holistic care) before they become mainstream.
• Lifecycle Management: Manage the entire product lifecycle from sourcing and onboarding to maturity and eventual liquidation/discontinuation.

• Dynamic Pricing Strategy: Move beyond monthly updates. Utilize automated pricing intelligence tools to monitor competitor movements in real-time, executing dynamic pricing strategies that balance Top-Line Sales with Margin protection.
• MAP Governance: Strictly enforce Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies to protect brand integrity.
• Subscription Focus: Collaborate with marketing to identify, enroll and retain Auto-ship candidates to increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
• Joint Business Planning: Move vendors from transactional relationships to strategic partners. Negotiate comprehensive agreements that include JBP (Joint Business Planning), exclusivity periods, and first-to-market opportunities.
• Supply Chain Resilience: Work with vendors and the internal purchasing team to ensure supply chain diversity, mitigating out-of-stocks on critical supplies.
• Financial Negotiation: Improve backend profitability through negotiation of rebates, MDF/co-op (Market Development Funds), short-dated opportunities, and volume incentives, partnering with senior leadership on complex or high-impact negotiations.

• UX & Discovery: Collaborate with the e-commerce/marketing team to optimize site taxonomy, internal search ranking, and cross-selling (product recommendations) algorithms.
• Content Excellence: Collaborate with the e-commerce/marketing team to ensure all PDPs (Product Detail Pages) are optimized for SEO/GEO and conversion, utilizing video content, enhanced imagery, and soliciting User Generated Content (reviews/photos).
• Performance Marketing Support: Provide high-intent product information to the Marketing team for Paid Media Shopping, Social Ads, and Email flows.
• Catalog Evolution: Curate the Equine, Farm, and Pet catalogs/print pieces not just as sales vehicles, but as brand-building retention tools. Select high-ROI items that drive customers to the web.
• Unified Pricing: Ensure seamless pricing and promotional alignment across online and offline/print channels.

• Demand Forecasting: Utilize modern demand planning tools to forecast seasonality, specifically accounting for disease outbreaks (e.g., Equine Flu) or seasonal shifts.
• Aged Inventory Control: Proactively partner with Purchasing to manage inventory levels and execute exit strategies for slow-moving SKUs with a strategic mark-down approach.

• Team Development: Mentor and train Category Management team members, fostering a culture of data literacy and agility.
• Industry Presence: Represent the brand at major industry trade shows and sponsorship events as requested.
• Note:
  
  This role involves "hands-on" leadership, including booth design, set up, and direct selling at select premier events to maintain connection with the core customer.
• Cross-Functional Agility: Collaborate closely across Category Management, Marketing, Warehouse Operations, and Customer Service (Call Center) to execute category priorities and resolve issues.