Head of Category
Job description
About the Role
We are looking for a passionate new Head of Category to join an ambitious and high performing business that has driven continuous double digit growth for the last 3 years. Reporting to the Managing Director you will be responsible for leading a team of 3 to deliver outstanding category advice to our key customers, while internally delivering the insight, reporting and category strategy to unlock growth.
Area
Key Responsibilities & Objectives
Leadership and Team empowerment
- You’ll lead the category team for BEAR and Peter’s Yard in the UK by setting clear direction, encouraging your team and the wider business to always deliver exceptional results, empowering them through trusted leadership and personal development.
- Setting clear objectives and building development plans for 3 x Category Managers to support them in their personal growth.
- Work with our colleagues in the wider business to identify and deliver insights into the UK and Global Brand Marketing teams to inform and shape strategy.
Customer Collaboration
- This is a customer facing role – whilst you won’t necessarily be responsible for retailer accounts day-to-day you will need to build and maintain strong relationships with key contacts so that our customers understand and buy in to our strategy and vision.
- Strong understanding of retailer strategies and the wider environment to ensure we remain customer and shopper centric.
- A strong external network is also helpful to give you an outside perspective from other categories and businesses.
Strategic Insights
- All this data is only useful if it enables us to make better business decisions. You’ll be integral to the way that the business uses data.
- Key input as part of the MD’s leadership team, being the voice of category and source of objective truth.
- Development of the UK Category Vision and Strategy for both BEAR and Peter’s Yard and translating this into something that is both actionable, executable and understandable within each retailer.
- You will lead and own the strategy for Revenue Growth Management.
- You will kick off our annual planning process with a brand and category diagnostics, meaning our brand plans are always insight led.
Developing best practices
- You’ll make sure that the right data is available to the business and is being used the right way - whether informing internal strategy and business planning, or improving relationships with our retailers.
- Management of continuous data and regular reporting on category performance to the total BEAR and Peter’s Yard business. Feeding in monthly KPIs to the MD leadership meetings.
- Management of the UK BEAR and Peter’s Yard category budget – ensuring we are getting the most value for our data.
Profile
You will likely be an existing Senior Category Development Manager or Head of Category within an FMCG environment.
Alongside living our values, here are the most important things we’re looking for from you:
- A passion for data and well-versed in the tools of the trade (Nielsen, Circana , Kantar, Dunnhumby, SIP)
- This is a data driven, strategic role, so you’ll be a great problem solver with experience of using complex insight data to create short and long term strategies
- Excellent communication skills, in particular inspirational presentation skills
- Ability to build great relationships both internally and externally, finding collaborative simple solutions and being recognised as a trusted expert that unlocks opportunities
- Outcome focused, results driven
- Able to prioritise quickly in a fast moving, entrepreneurial environment
- Proven commercial acumen by being able to evaluate how category strategy will impact sales and profitability
- This is a small team within the business, but it has a big impact – we need someone who will be an inspiring leader. We’d love someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously, who is passionate about contributing to the culture at BEAR, Peter’s Yard and the wider Natural Foods business and who is as happy to get stuck in
Offer
Grasp the opportunity to join an ambitious and driven team with a mix of talents! Being part of a fast growing, international company, you will get tons of on-the-job-learning and acquire new insights.
In addition, you will be part of a culture where passion, team spirit and open dialogue are our main drivers.
And of course, on top of that, you can enjoy delicious branded snacks every day!
Do you want to be part of a terrific team with the ambition to create small moments of happiness every day? Meet our people, discover their unique skills and get excited to join them in a great work environment.
Meet the team