Candy Category Merchandising Associate

Walgreens; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 65,000 - 175,000; Full time

Job summary

Walgreens in Deerfield, IL is seeking an Associate Category Manager for Candy to collaborate with Category Managers to select and purchase candy merchandise, analyzing economics, sources and policy to secure the lowest-cost, highest-value offerings.

You will help develop merchandising techniques, promotional plans and distribution strategies, and work with store teams to align assortment, forecasts and planograms with data-driven insights to meet consumer needs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher with at least 2 years of relevant experience in retail, procurement, merchandising, vendor relations, pharmacy operations, or retail marketing.
• Experience working with P&L concepts—revenue, cogs, gross profit margin, operating expenses and income.
• Knowledge of customer centric retailing principles and the analytics of customer purchase behavior.
• At least 2 years of experience developing programs in merchandising, vendor relations, and marketing in the retail business.

Responsibilities

• Plans, develops, and recommends sales, gross profit level, inventory control, and merchandise turnover objectives for the assigned department(s) and item(s).
• Develops and recommends merchandising, display, advertising, distribution, packaging and sales plans and programs for assigned items and merchandise departments.
• Negotiates buying contracts on categories or subsets of categories as determined by the Divisional Merchandise Manager (DMM) or Category Manager (CM). Reviews contracts with the CM.
• analyzes market, competitive, and customer perception data, and provides recommendations to the DMM and CM regarding price levels.
• Reviews and analyzes historical and YTD category performance data. Recommends performance goals for categories, and manages category performance as assigned by the DMM and CM.
• Works closely with Store Experience and merchandise planning to build and review category insights. Utilizes data to make recommendations to Category Managers and DMMs on planograms, ROTO spots, promotional programs, merchandising assortment, forecasts, and other key category initiatives. Takes the initiative to elicit insights from data and recommend programs to division leadership.
• Develops an understanding of Walgreens and WBA private brands, including assortment and projected sales forecasts, gross profit level, and merchandising and promotional programs. Works with the Category Manager and/or DMM to project sales forecasts and gross profit levels within the assigned categories.

Skills

P&L concepts

Customer-centric retailing

Cross-functional leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree

High school diploma/GED

Tools

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft Word

Job description

Walgreens in Deerfield, IL is seeking an Associate Category Manager for Candy to collaborate with Category Managers to select and purchase candy merchandise, analyzing economics, sources and policy to secure the lowest-cost, highest-value offerings.

You will help develop merchandising techniques, promotional plans and distribution strategies, and work with store teams to align assortment, forecasts and planograms with data-driven insights to meet consumer needs.