Category Coordinator

The Category Coordinator is responsible for planning assortment by geographical areas, developing pricing strategy, planning promotional activity, and managing key supply chain relationships with vendor partners. Must be able to effectively communicate appropriate plans with internal stakeholders.

Main Responsibilities

• Act as subject matter expert for assigned categories, providing thought leadership to organization.
• Reevaluate sourcing standards as a team to ensure alignment with company mission and category assortment needs.
• Ensure items are setup correctly in Pricebook and within our acceptable margins.
• Send communications if any changes and coordinate with the field merchandisers, regarding price changes, updating tags, and verify items are scanning on the register.
• Analyze internal and external data to develop category strategies aligned with industry and consumer trends.
• Manage onboarding and offboarding of products within time-bound category review schedule in accordance with sourcing standards.
• Assists negotiate costs, distribution and delivery terms with suppliers and execute pricing strategy to meet margin targets for assigned categories.
• Examine competition to determine trends and pricing bandwidth.
• Work with Buyers and Merchandisers to implement successful exit strategies for stagnant items from inventory.
• Manages, improves and recommends the product assortment for the stores on a national basis for assigned category.
• Plans include assortment and positioning, product improvements and development plans, projected revenues and gross profit, display, price, promotion and communication to stores.
• Drill plans down into seasonal calendars, monthly implementation plans and recurring assortment change calendars.
• Performs monthly analysis and verification of plans.
• Develop recommended retail pricing guidelines (which are subject to executive committee approval) for the stores to optimize category profitability and establish suggested retail prices within these guidelines.
• Reviews competitor pricing information gathered by Zone Merchandisers and pricing group and recommends pricing.
• Works with merchandising leadership on advertising/promotions for assigned category.
• Works on POP, co-op agreements and promotion timetables and strategies.
• Develops cost/benefit analysis to determine return on advertising and promotional dollars. Vendor or Supplier Relationships / Supply Chain Management.
• Works with suppliers to stabilize product supply through forecasting of key products to solve issues.
• Reviews and works with manufacturers to resolve out-of-stock issues.
• Develops and maintains effective working relationships with representatives and senior management of national suppliers.
• Meets with national vendors on a regular basis to discuss new product development and ways to lower costs.
• Guides Merchandisers in the development of the schematics.
• Gathers input from the Merchandisers into regional assortment needs.
• Performs narrowing (SKU rationalization) of assigned categories and works with suppliers to narrow products supplied to stores.
• Manages the product develop process for assigned categories (including Team Merchandising)
• Manages the implementation of field tests for new products and categories.
• Oversees verification of tests performed by Merchandisers and determines next course of action based upon verification results.
• Reviews solicitations from potential suppliers to determine if potential product is viable for the company.
• As lead for the assigned categories, owns communication of key strategic initiatives across the organization.
• Manages day to day communication of key messaging to assigned categories across Merchandising, Marketing, Operations and other related groups. Weekly category review of all items per category, monitor price changes and exception reports.
• Other duties as assigned.

Skills and Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

• 1 years relevant work experience in category management, preferably in the designated category
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Outstanding communication and time management skills
• Some Marketing experience preferred
• Subject matter expertise for products within assigned categories; category retail experience a plus
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Proficiency in Google and Microsoft Office software (i.e. spreadsheets, presentation, and word processing software)