Category Manager

Key responsibilities

• Accountable for profitable category growth in North America
• Responsible for developing and executing internal and external category plans and communicating to sales, customers, and leadership team
• Develop vision, mission, initiatives and scorecard measures to achieve category and regional goals; revise the category plan as appropriate.
• Turn customer, installer and product data into actionable tactics to drive profitable growth
• Perform market research and partner with third party vendors to ensure the organization is responding to the voice of the customer
• Work with global teams to execute category plan and align global product line strategy with regional needs
• Identify customer specific product assortments and inventory deployment proposals to maximize customer sales and minimize returns
• Collaborate on the development of marketing materials and promotional plans
• Communicate often with Sales on product line trends and customer concerns
• Create price strategy to achieve regional financial goals
• Provide customer support as required (e.g. gap analysis, market insights, customer strategy recommendations, presentations and respond to inquiries)
• Conduct competitive benchmarking on a regular basis to ensure we are aligned (or better) than our competitors
• Implement pricing strategies based on market analytics
• Responsible for identifying new to range product pipeline and launching new products within the region; communicate plans to Global Product for alignment and support
• Generate new product introduction ideas with support from Sales, Product, and Engineering
• Support Purchasing team with data to help drive down product costs
• Work with Product and Engineering to identify product attributes and specifications to support the development of marketing materials
• Partner with logistics team to manage inventory
• Plan for SKU obsolescence and identify potential consolidations/supersessions

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What we’re looking for

• Bachelor’s degree in business or related field is preferred but industry experience may be considered in place of a degree
• Minimum of 2+ years of automotive aftermarket experience
• Minimum of 2+ years of market and data analysis experience
• Proven ability to manipulate and organize complex part level data into concise reports
• Ability to work and solve problems independently, in a team, and cross functionally
• Strong communication and presentation skills, both oral and written
• Confidence in judgement and decision making
• Proficient with Microsoft Office

Preferred experiences

• Knowledge or experience with the North America Fuel Handling market
• Knowledge of North American light, medium and heavy-duty aftermarket and channels of distribution
• Ability to research part number interchanges