at Ace Hardware in Oak Brook, Illinois, United States
Job Description
The Job
The International Merchandise Manager leads a merchant team responsible for Ace International’s assortment strategy, development, and execution across specific categories. They aim to achieve success in wholesale and retail metrics like sales, gross profit, and margin rate for international retailers and franchisees, serving both B2C and B2B customers. Additionally, the role includes leadership within a peer team, contributing to organizational structure, personnel management, strategy formulation, goal setting, and execution planning.
The oversight of the International Merchandise Manager team is the core of driving alignment and disciplined execution of the company’s promise to deliver regionally relevant, high quality, differentiated, assortments to Ace International retailers and franchisees across the world.
The International Merchandise Manager:
+ leads within the organization by applying a thorough understanding of his/her commercial region, the competitive landscape, consumer demands, and industry trends.
+ directs the omni-channel product strategy for a group of categories at Ace International, aiming to maximize top-line sales and bottom-line profitability. This involves creating opportunities for international retailers and greenfield franchisees to enhance profits by reducing costs, increasing sales, and offering consumer-relevant, differentiated assortments.
+ collaborates cross-functionally to strategically capitalize on regional opportunities, delivering tailored assortments for various types of retailers globally.
What you’ll do:
Strategy and Assortment Planning
+ Interpret Ace International strategies to align with departmental strategic direction as it relates to inventory management of warehouse, overstock and seasonal SKUs, trend and industry relevant seasonal and/or core product assortments; profitable convenience, core and super planograms; and marketing initiatives.
+ Lead the strategic planning process to grow respective categories in terms of sales and gross profit, as well as common strategies around shared initiatives to drive improvement within the enterprise.
+ Oversight of all category metrics including sales plan, product GMROI, vendor supply chain goals, SKU optimization and inventory management
+ Present 3-year strategies to officer team with departmental alignment and execute to plan.
+ Oversee shifts in priorities throughout the year to report progress and shifts in execution.
+ Oversee category growth plan with new, innovative, exclusive assortments and vendor partnerships for Ace International.
+ Lead highly complex assortment and initiative development and execution (Level 3 POG) requiring cross-functional support.
Team and Cross-Functional Leadership
+ Participate in overall leadership of merchandising team, assisting in setting annual goals, growth plans and execution via alignment with cross-functional areas of the company. Manage key vendor relationships and assigned growth projects.
+ Continue to administer platforms to support process change/improvement and streamline organizational, system inefficiencies.
+ Demonstrate leadership across the organization via strong cross-functional relationships with key business partners and teams, including, AGD, ACE domestic, category management, supply chain, marketing, sales and retail operations.
+ Continually administer platforms to support process change/improvement and streamline organizational and system inefficiencies.
Team Building and Development
+ Responsible for attracting and retaining best in class talent for the merchandising department. Facilitate/engage teams with leadership and business skills training, mentor future leaders and continually coach for excellence.
+ Communicating roles and responsibilities, establishing goals, prioritizing workload, conducting talent reviews and support development.
Regional insights, Retailer Relationships and Communication
+ Leads a deep understanding of commercial regional, the competitive landscape, consumer, and regional trends.
+ Visit international retailers and targeted retail store visits to build trust and rapport with sales team and key stores to review alignment and opportunities in respective categories.
+ Oversee team execution within all retailer touchpoints.
Financial Performance
+ Achieve yearly financial plans through oversight of strategic planning, reduction in cost negotiations, increased retailer adoption and enterprise channel extensions (AIH, and Greenfield).
+ Manage financial metric planning and grow overall team wholesale product gross profit income while maintaining pricing/conditions.
+ Manage and grow team vendors Allowance agreements.
+ Manage team marketing fund to fund category growth initiatives.
Category Reviews
+ Oversee team category selection and goals for assortments (both B2B and B2C) via performance analysis and assessments of financial analysis, marketplace, consumer, and Ace retailer positioning.
+ Leads negotiations with vendors to unlock distribution rights and lift existing restrictions for AHI retailers and Greenfield franchisees.
+ Provide insights to deliver regionally relevant AHI assortments, for all categories.
+ Provide oversight and mentoring to merchants through cross-functional review objective development, review plan, vendor engagement, negotiation, and assortment build.
+ Build with merchant execution targets and action plans with leadership alignment.
Promotional Planning
+ Work cross functionally to build the annual promotional strategy.
+ Collectively plan with team vendor promotional targets and vendor negotiation.
+ Oversee group promotional schedule of advertised categories/items across all mediums.
Convention Planning
+ Oversee team planning and execution of all vendors show programs.
+ Lead retailer and cross-functional updates for team including sales meetings, retailer updates during the show.
What you will need:
Competencies:
Ace Merchandise Manager Competencies
+ Product passion - Natural and fanatical curiosity around product and retail marketplace, demonstrated and put into action.
+ Strategic thinking - Ability to manage from big picture position to create a strategy through planning, problem solving and understanding of business needs. Facilitates conversations with others to better understand and determined root cause of problem.
+ Results-oriented - Ability to drive results and empower others to make decisions, take appropriate risk, and drive bottom-line results. Owns failures and positively uses them for future planning.
+ Leadership - Ability to guide and support the performance and development of others to produce other leaders. Communicates information that addresses other’s concerns and issues and looks for win-win solutions. Creates opportunities for others to develop.
+ Negotiation skills - Superior negotiation skills with proven results leveraging company scale, business drivers and strategies.
+ Communication - Ability to plan, assemble and present with excellence strategy, execution, and updates to leadership, across the organization, vendors, and retailers.
+ Problem Solving - Facilitates conversations with others to better understand and determine root cause of problem, ultimately guiding towards a solution.
+ Performance management - Demonstrates knowledge and skills to meet future business needs.
Experience and Technical Requirements:
+ Bachelor’s Degree preferred (Merchandising or Business degrees a plus) OR comparable work experience.
+ 10+ years of business experience
+ 5+ years managing product categories.
+ Strong strategic thinking and leadership skills.
+ A track re
To view full details and how to apply, please login or create a Job Seeker account