Household Category Merchandiser — Data-Driven Buyer

Walgreens; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 86,000 - 138,000; Full time

Job summary

Walgreens is seeking an Associate Category Manager- Household to collaborate with Category Managers in selecting and purchasing merchandise across limited categories, ensuring low cost through thorough business analysis and supplier evaluation. You will help develop merchandising techniques, promotional plans, and distribution services to meet consumer and store needs.

With direction from the CM, you will project sales and gross profit, review category performance, and work on planograms and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and at least 2 years’ experience in two or more of the following: retail, procurement/purchasing, 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.
• Intermediate level skill in Microsoft Excel (for example: using SUM function, setting borders, setting column width, inserting charts, using text wrap, sorting, setting headers and footers and/or print scaling).
• Basic skill level in Microsoft PowerPoint (for example: inserting, rearranging, hiding and deleting slides, navigating between slides, increasing list level, adding, centering and editing text, changing views, inserting a table or a note, moving objects, printing outline view and/or running a slide show).
• Basic level skill in Microsoft Word (for example: opening a document, cutting, pasting and aligning text, selecting font type and size, changing margins and column width, sorting, inserting bullets, pictures and dates, using find and replace, undo, spell check, track changes, review pane and/or print functions).

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 analytics

Cross-functional leadership

Vendor relations

Retail merchandising

Education

Bachelor's degree

High school diploma/GED

Tools

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft Word

Job description

Walgreens is seeking an Associate Category Manager- Household to collaborate with Category Managers in selecting and purchasing merchandise across limited categories, ensuring low cost through thorough business analysis and supplier evaluation. You will help develop merchandising techniques, promotional plans, and distribution services to meet consumer and store needs.

With direction from the CM, you will project sales and gross profit, review category performance, and work on planograms and