A hugely exciting opportunity to join a well-established food manufacturer during a period of significant positive cultural change and impressive growth.
The Location
The company are in South Yorkshire. It's an office based role with a small degree of flexibility for home working.
The Company
A chilled food manufacturer, who have a broad product range and are the main player in a number of high growth, on-trend market categories.
The company is well established and highly regarded in their sector. Having recently been acquired they have a new and impressive leadership team in place who are already achieving significant turnover and profit growth.
The new owners are hugely ambitious and making major investments that will allow the company to further improve their performance by moving into exciting new product areas.
Customers are predominantly in grocery retail, with particular focus on the Top 4 multiples. However there is also a drive towards new sales channels, with foodservice being of particular interest.
Shopper and consumer insight are of crucial importance in defining and delivering the commercial strategy and, as such, this will be a pivotal role in the Commercial team.
The Role
Reporting to the Commercial Director, and with responsibility for managing a Category Manager, the Senior Category Manager will take overall ownership for the Category Management function.
They will manage the Category relationship with a small number of strategically important Top 4 retail customers.
Key responsibilities of the role include:
- Create a trust-based relationship with customers based on credible insight into current and past performance and actionable recommendations to improve this performance.
- Develop and refine the strategy for all key categories. Work with internal stakeholders and customers to deliver these strategies to maximise category and business growth.
- Establish a category review cycle with key customers, enabling the company to influence the strategic direction of the range-review process and benefit from ranging and product development outcomes.
- Establish data needs and work with the data providers to ensure that these are met in the most timely and cost effective fashion.
- Manage and develop the Category Manager.
The Person
We are looking for an experienced Category Manager, with own-label experience. They will have the opportunity to contribute to the strategic direction of the business and play a pivotal role in delivering this strategy.
Key skills and experience will include:
- Currently in a Category Management role working with major multiple customers.
- A good balance between high-level strategic thinking and granular analysis.
- A pragmatist who can balance the need to deliver category growth for the retailer with the need to deliver the commercial KPIs of the company.
- Able to communicate complex information and present ideas in a compelling fashion.
- A collaborative team player who can build strong internal and external relationships.
- An inspirational people manager.
- An ambitious Category professional who is keen to develop themselves and others.