Senior Manager Category Development

Deliver marketing and sales analytical support to help drive profitable volume and margin. Own the key external data deliverables to the Pet marketing and sales leadership and broader organization. Present strategic distribution opportunities to key senior leadership at our customers. Be seen as the Strategic Private Label Advisor to our retailers and be seen as a “Go to” authority on the pet category for our Co-Man customers.

Requires a mastery of nearly a dozen data and insights tools in order to be a leader within the industry to have best in class insights among any pet food company in the industry.

- This is a salary exempt position.

Lead the Company’s category analytics initiative utilizing external market data. Oversee the execution of category analytics activities and prioritize sales team requests and ad hoc initiatives. Be the go to leader of the established data council group due to a mastery of all of the data tools such as Nielsen, Rakuten ecomm data, Euromonitor data, Via ecomm data, retailer specific data portals and Label insights and search terms data tools.

Drive the Innovation and research strategy for R&D. Drive the pet food learning culture within the organization in relation to overall market and internal insights for strategy development and tactical execution. Lead the innovation discussion around where we should invest in our resources around product innovation due to market trends and shopper insights. Provide strong analysis of data for both the Co-pack and the Private Label business but also helping to uncover future growth opportunities in white space areas.

Manage the relationship with our insights supplier team for Perfect Shelf project work- own the analytical projects with the 4 person team with our to get all images and dimensions up to date. Prioritize their workload with our 20 hers per week contract. Lead the initiatives to create a Bronze, Silver and Gold Assortment strategy for our retailers. From this strategy, manage the insights partner team to develop best in class use cases of the shelf/planogram layout including strategic brand blocking of Private Label.

Build, develop and own the sales reporting dashboards involving Nielsen data and Numerator panel data. Monitor and report on competitive activity. Work with the Insights supplier and our IT on building out the dashboards that will be updated weekly for the marketing team and updated monthly for the broader pet team.

Manage the 3 party relationship with our panel data provider. Lead the meetings with the panel data team, own the agenda and manage the hours and workload for their consulting work. Be the point personal for all panel data requests that come through regardless of which panel data provider it is.

Own the market pricing and innovation pricing analytics and strategy. Build out weekly pricing trackers to manage price changes in the market and notify the team based on exceptions. This will provide us the strategy on when to take pricing action by being aware of market changes when they happen. This role will also own the pricing analysis for all innovation that comes through sales and the R&D team.

Lead selling stories for the sales team around key customer meetings and top to tops. Develop world class presentations and lead educational sessions for the sales organization. Generate presentations that can be leveraged by the sales group to enhance customer relationship and drive strategic growth opportunities. Be seen as the “Private Label Advisor” for our retailers. This will involve presenting to senior leadership at our customers at least a dozen times per year in person and virtually.

Own the Primary research learning agenda. Create a learning agenda based on needs from Sales leadership, our R&D team and input from our customers. Vet out potential research partners such as Acosta or Vista Grande to field focus group and shopper studies to learn the shopping behaviors and purchase drivers of wet cat and wet dog households. Invite key strategic customers to be a part of that research including focus groups such as Walmart or others to drive development of item and distribution opportunities…