Role Overview
Associate Director - Category Management
Core Areas
Category Strategy & Growth | Product Assortment & Portfolio Management | Strategic Sourcing
Vendor & Partner Management | Inventory & Working Capital Optimization
Pricing, Margin & P&L Ownership | Stakeholder & Team Leadership
Key Responsibilities
1. Category Strategy & Business Ownership
- Own the overall category vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with company goals.
- Drive topline growth, margin expansion, and long-term category profitability.
- Define success metrics and continuously track performance across sales, margin, fill rate, inventory turns, and customer satisfaction.
- Identify whitespace opportunities and lead category expansion initiatives.
2. Product & Assortment Leadership
- Lead assortment planning at scale, ensuring the right mix of selection, price points, and brands.
- Use customer insights, market trends, and competitive intelligence to shape assortment decisions.
- Drive innovation through new product introductions, private labels, or exclusive partnerships where applicable.
- Ensure assortment remains relevant, differentiated, and customer-centric.
3. Strategic Supplier & Partner Management
- Build and manage senior-level relationships with key suppliers, brands, and manufacturers.
- Lead high-value negotiations on commercial terms, pricing, contracts, and strategic partnerships.
- Drive joint business planning (JBP) with top partners to unlock growth and operational efficiencies.
- Ensure supplier performance on quality, compliance, and service levels.
4. Inventory, Forecasting & Supply Optimization
- Oversee demand forecasting, inventory planning, and replenishment strategies to optimize working capital.
- Balance availability, fill rates, and inventory health across the category.
- Lead initiatives to reduce slow-moving, aging, or obsolete inventory.
- Partner with supply chain and operations teams to improve forecasting accuracy and execution.
5. Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work closely with marketing, growth, merchandising, supply chain, finance, and product teams.
- Drive integrated go-to-market plans including promotions, launches, and seasonal campaigns.
- Provide category inputs for pricing, promotions, and customer acquisition strategies.
- Act as the category spokesperson in leadership and business reviews.
6. Customer & Market Focus
- Champion a customer-first mindset across all category decisions.
- Leverage customer feedback, NPS, and behavioral data to improve assortment and experience.
- Ensure consistent quality, value, and relevance across the portfolio.
7. Team Leadership & Capability Building
- Lead and manage a team of category managers, buyers, and analysts, ensuring strong execution across sourcing, assortment, pricing, and inventory outcomes.
- Provide strategic direction and day-to-day guidance, balancing hands-on coaching with empowerment to drive independent ownership of categories.
- Set clear performance goals and KPIs aligned to category P&L, growth, margin, availability, and customer experience metrics.
- Conduct regular performance reviews, feedback sessions, and development conversations to continuously raise the bar on execution quality.
- Build and maintain strong succession pipelines by identifying high-potential talent and creating structured development and exposure opportunities.
- Foster a culture of accountability and ownership, where teams are encouraged to take end-to-end responsibility for category outcomes.
- Drive data-driven decision making by embedding analytical rigor into planning, reviews, and business decisions.
- Establish best practices, playbooks, and standard operating processes to improve consistency, scalability, and efficiency across categories.
- Encourage continuous improvement by regularly reviewing performance, identifying root causes, and implementing corrective and preventive actions.
- Partner with HR and leadership to support hiring, onboarding, and capability-building initiatives as the category organization scales.
What Were Looking For
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, or a related field (MBA preferred).
6 - 8 years of experience
in category management, buying, or merchandising, preferably in ecommerce or consumer-focused businesses.- Proven experience owning category-level P&L and driving growth at scale.
- Strong strategic thinking combined with hands-on execution ability.
- Excellent negotiation, stakeholder management, and leadership skills.
- High analytical capability with strong comfort using data to drive decisions.
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment.
- Proficiency with buying, inventory, and analytics tools.
