Category Manager

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JLB is an award-winning, retail consulting firm that is passionate about helping brands succeed at Target and Target win in the Marketplace. More than a traditional broker, we offer tailored solutions across Sales, Strategy, Category Management, Insights, Digital, Shopper Marketing, and more — helping brands thrive at one of the world’s most innovative retailers.

The Team

Our Category Management Service at Target serves as a pivotal resource for the Target buying team, offering flawless day-to-day support and is entrusted with direct access to Target’s internal systems. This role is exclusively dedicated to Target, representing a collaborative and strategic partnership that seamlessly integrates with the Target buying team. The Category Manager is an experienced, trusted advisor providing thought leadership and strategy direction with analytically based actionable insights addressing business goals and challenges.

The Role

The Category Manager leads complex category work, expertly analyzing data from multiple sources, synthesizing to deliver clear, tailored presentations to the Target buying team. This role combines analytics, presentation, and leadership skills to guide both short and long-term initiatives. They anticipate business needs and proactively identify challenges and opportunities. Strong project management, problem-solving, and communication skills are essential.

• Relationships: Independently manages day-to-day relationships with Target and cross-functional teams, including merchant, business analyst, inventory analyst, space & transition planning & pricing promo team, and develops relationships with Director merchant. Leads preparation and execution of client meetings, including weekly updates and ad hoc sessions, while driving collaborative problem-solving discussions. Provides strategic recommendations grounded in a deep understanding of category trends and client needs.
• Reporting: Owns the end-to-end reporting process, combining advanced data analytics with a deep understanding of business drivers. Integrates multiple data sources to deliver detailed weekly reports and strategic insights that highlight performance trends, opportunities, and risks. Incorporates insights on sales, promotions, and inventory in multiple roll-ups like brand, vendor, subcategory, and item. Develops and manages custom attributes, enabling deeper analysis and providing valuable insights into business performance.
  
  Supports ad hoc reporting needs, proactively identifying relevant data points to address client questions and guide decisions.
• Marketplace Insights/Competitive Shops: Manages in-depth analyses of competitive marketplace and retailer trends, including merchandising, pricing, brand, and SKU selection. Produces comprehensive reports on market share, competitive retailer performance, and industry trends. Identifies and capitalizes on emerging trends, opportunity items, promotional themes, and merchandising strategies. Provides strategic recommendations to the Target merchant team.
• Category & Seasonal Reviews: Executes category and seasonal review utilizing some pre-established templates and creating custom outputs for their business. Gains a deep understanding of client strategies and analyzes sales, space-to-sales, consumer behavior, basket drivers, segmentation, pricing tiers, assortment gaps, white space, and merchandising. Provides actionable insights and strategic recommendations to enhance category performance and productivity. Is successful at synthesizing to create executive summaries and key recommendations summaries independently.
  
  Effectively presents to the client, utilizing advanced presentation techniques to convey complex data and insights, fostering client understanding and buy-in.
• Planogram Process: Own the transition & revision planogram process from start to finish. This includes managing T&A, confirming item images & attributes, merchandise planning, SVP walk-through support, planogram optimization, and writing all planogram…