Category Manager- Produce

Purpose

Strategically manages categories and negotiates to increase sales, gross dollars, market share versus prior year, and meet or exceed projected numbers. Recommends pricing, promotion, assortment and shelf planograms for each assigned category, based on detailed analysis of past performance and results, industry best practices, and consumer trends.

• Drives sales, sets a vision, and executes necessary steps for category success
• Owns vendor relationship as a primary contact by maintaining quality relations and meeting on a consistent basis for growth results, negotiate future planning, range assortment, and understanding of industry trends
• Manages P&L, monitoring and recommending prices, to obtain the most aggressive price in the market
• Works closely with partner functions (sourcing, replenishment, supply chain etc.) and communicates category and promotional plans to ensure desired service levels and the optimum inventory position achieved
• Owns cross functional work with a wide variety of teams such as replenishment, suppliers, branding, and others to fulfill objectives and responsibilities of full ownership to assigned items
• Partners with promotional team on creation and implementation of a promotional calendar by major category and in tracking results at the end of each promotion in terms of sales, P&L share growth, or contribution
• Collaborates with Space Planning team for POGs, attentive to advertisements, keeping foot traffic in mind
• Drives product development through understanding market quality of both national and private brand, maintains private brand and product quality, and identifies need (or lack of need) for private brand products
• Owns the assortment planning process by making logical recommendations of new items entering the market and discontinuing lines based on potential contribution to the category strategies and department
• Takes ownership in working with the Quality Assurance team to determine the right quality specs and specify composition and sensory requirements of products
• Holds supplier accountable to continually provide the negotiated quality within agreement terms
• Collaborates with analysts and finance and analyzes category through measurement of total contribution to the entire department, previous results, and market trends to create a yearly category business plan
• Acts as expert on assigned items with understanding of ingredients, commodity impacts, and packaging costs
• Held accountable for gross profit projections at the category level, rolling up to department projections quarterly, monthly, and yearly
• Partner with promotional planning and space planning teams to recommend ads and displays in support of the category plans and total department initiatives for stores
• Visits competition as well as markets, stores, and distribution centers as necessary to observe resultsof product lines and communicate knowledge of competitive products, performance, and business trends
• Ensures all items are in effective and efficient display cases for supply chains and stores
• Pro-actively recognizes issues, defines customer-focused solutions, leads cross functional teams to define actions that will sustainably drive results, and presents strategy to line manager or above
• Initiates and follow through on personnel actions such as: interviewing and providing input used in hiring decisions, and/or providing feedback on performance standards
• Maintains formal and informal channels of upward communication; encourage the expression of new ideas, suggestions, and complaints; review them for appropriateness and further action
• Performs other duties as assigned

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Marketing or related field and/or 3-5 years of relevant retail experience
• 3-5 years relevant business experience where a solid understanding of marketing, merchandising, Consumer research and financial management practiceshave been gained
• Solid financial, mathematical, statistical, marketing, merchandising, and consumer research background to read, interpret, and understand how internal and external factors influence financial results
• In-depth understanding of store operations and merchandising…