Director Merchandising for Retail (Chicago)

Role : Director Merchandising for Retail

Location : Cincinnati, Chicago, or Boston

Leading Business Operations for Retail Grocery Merchandising

Manage and guide the team of item specialists, pricing analysts, category analysts and floor planners / planogram analysts that provide supply chain planning business services to our retail customers around Item & Supplier Setup, Pricing & Promotions Management, Planogram & Floor Plan Maintenance.

Responsible for the merchandising team meeting and exceeding KPIs such as on time performance and accuracy around item & supplier onboarding, planograms & floor plan design & changes as well as price and promotion changes.

Work with customer leadership across merchandising, planning, supply chain and store operations to drive improvements in the category management processes

Lead and mentor the team to identify and execute continuous improvements across process, people and technology that drive efficiency and improvements to business KPIs

Work with team leads to project workload impact of upcoming seasonality and help plan / manage workload effectively to meet customer needs.

Participate in customer senior leadership team meetings to provide an update on performance for merchandising functions, understand customer strategic priorities and implications for the merchandising function and translate that into actions for the merchandising teams.

Business Consulting

Provide thought leadership around best practices in category management for grocery retail.

Proactively work with sales teams for category management opportunities to define the solution and effectively position capabilities in this area.

Interface with industry analysts to detail our capabilities and experience in category management.

Collaborate with other functions within to conceptualize category management offerings.

Qualifications : Must Have

Strong experience in retail category management functions, specifically around supplier and item onboarding, space & range / assortment and pricing / promotions processes

Familiarity with DSD processes

Ability to work with senior customer leadership to report on performance and collaborate on upcoming events / initiatives

Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, self-starter

Extremely strong communication & interpersonal skills to work effectively with customer leadership and various departments to drive issue resolution, reach agreements, and collaborate on strategic initiatives

Ability to create impactful presentations to articulate key messages to internal and customer leadership

Good to Have

Retail Merchandising consulting experience

Experience working with and managing globally distributed diverse teams

Knowledge of any of the leading merch solutions including BY, SAP, Oracle, Symphony, Relex, etc.

Educational Qualifications : Bachelors Degree / MBA