Responsibilities:

The Category - Product Manager is responsible for overseeing, coordinating, and contributing to the business activities related to a product’s life cycle. The main function of this position is to manage the Discovery & Innovation, New Product Planning, and New Product Introduction phases of the product life cycle model shown below. These activities will be heavily weighted toward understanding and anticipating consumer, industry, and competitive trends, developing product-level strategic plans to take advantage of those trends, collaborating with the New Product Development team to ensure that products are developed in accordance with strategic plans, managing the launch of products and enhancements into the marketplace.

Discovery and Innovation:

· Accountable to define market research goals and provide direction to those involved in creating and executing a market research plan.

· Works with others to seek out consumer, industry, and competitive data and uses it to develop a keen market awareness and insights to drive product line strategic and tactical planning, including regulatory requirements for the business.

· Defines target segmentation based on common consumer motivations, preferences, or needs.

· Conducts competitive analysis and develops insights based on understanding each competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, the products/services they sell, how they are positioned, the segments in which they concentrate.

· Documents and regularly shares market information, insights and implications with functional stakeholders to ensure a common understanding and the impact on the product line.

· Responsible for developing a strategic baseline and a documented "vision" or "end-state" for the product or product line that helps shape realistic, achievable goals.

· Continuously gathers and analyzes market, financial and other performance indicators to uncover new opportunities for products and product lines.

· Develops product objectives that can be measured or tracked over time to determine how well the product's results contribute to the company’s success.

· Develops the long-term product/service portfolio and roadmap including channel differentiation.

· Communicates the product line vision and strategy widely, and conducts periodic strategic reviews to ensure cross-functional stakeholders are aligned.

New Product Planning:

· Accountable to oversee development projects and manage project scope to facilitate feature, cost and schedule trade-off decisions to ensure product goals and launch timings are met.

· Accountable to manage the risks associated with the development and launch of the product.

· Recommends GO/NO GO decisions at appropriate points in the NPD process to ensure that only those projects that are fit for commercialization proceed.

· Leads and synchronizes the efforts of the cross-functional team who will execute the Launch Plan and carry out the work required for a successful on-time launch.

· Accountable to ensure that content for marketing materials, sales guides and sales training are prepared.

· Accountable to ensure that all launch deliverables are met and that commercial processes are in place and ready for launch.

Post Launch Product Management:

· Accountable to gather information on consumer satisfaction, competitor actions, sales and channel performance, impact of promotional programs, and other marketing mix elements, and responsible to analyze these performance factors against established KPIs.

· Tracks the life cycle state of the product and recommends adjustments to the marketing mix as needed.

· Conducts regular product reviews with cross-functional stakeholders to review product performance against stated objectives and goals.

· Accountable to rationalize the product line portfolio and makes decisions to discontinue products as required.

Key Competencies:

· Strong business and financial acumen.

· Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills.

· Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

· Proficient computer skills.

· The ability to work within and lead cross-functional teams.

· Must be self-motivated, team player.

· Must have a “Can-Do” attitude and be able to multi-task effectively.

· Must understand intricacies of different retailers.

Education:

· Degree in Product Management, Business Management or Marketing, preferred

· 3-7 Years Durable goods experience in mass and specialty channels