SUMMARY

As our Associate Category Manager, you will be responsible for supporting the Category Manager with day-to-day business and product lifecycle management. The ideal candidate will have at least 2 years of experience in Brand Managment or Product Innovation in CPG.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

Project Management

• Support Category Manager(s) with category growth initiatives related to driving revenue, market share, and global expansion
• Lead cross functional product development team to successfully commercialize products and meet financial goals
• Portfolio Management
• Assist in the development of 3-year category strategies and innovation roadmap, driven by consumer, market and retailer insights capitalizing on specific needs and white space opportunities
• Develop deep category knowledge
• Monitor financial performance for assigned category including revenue tracking, margin and profitability, and rate of sale analysis
• Perform analysis for SKU rationalization and productivity at the item level and make a recommendation on go-forward plan
• Provide recommendations for MSRP pricing
• Support discontinue/transition planning
• Participate in S&OP process
• Innovation, Launch Planning & Execution
• Supports development of new product business cases aligned to category innovation strategy
• Support development of customer sell in strategy including product reason for being & merchandising recommendations, competitive advantages, and point of view and differentiation
• Collaborate on product communications brief to initiate marketing, fashion, video, photography, or other creative functions on project requests to bring the story to life
• Identify products to feature in seeded reviews and influencer outreach and develop action plans for low rated items
• Sales call, trade show and global showroom support
• Consumer and Marketplace Insights
• Utilizes POS, NPD and research to optimize category plans
• Initiate requests for research and collaborate on research plan and execution
• Supports management of market and competitive research provide updates to design and cross functional teams as necessary

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• 2 – 4 years of experience in Brand Management, or Product Innovation is required
• Has worked on a business with global or international exposure
• General knowledge of new product development processes
• Familiarity with the online and brick & mortar retail landscape is strongly preferred

EDUCATION & SKILLS

• Bachelor’s degree in business management, marketing, finance or other related field or equivalent work experience is required.
• Ability to execute and excel in high-paced organization
• Demonstrated success working in a matrix environment
• Proven ability to work on and lead a cross-functional team
• Ability to deal with changing environments, tight timelines and multiple priorities
• Strong communication skills, written and oral

COMPUTER/TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Must be proficient in PowerPoint, Excel and Word

WORK ENVIRONMENT

• In the office Monday through Thursday and working a half day on Fridays.