The Merchant is responsible for the profitable growth and optimization of assigned product categories. They will have primary responsibility for introducing new products into the marketplace and managing products through their entire life cycle to achieve key business objectives.
Key Roles and Responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain a comprehensive 24-month new product schedule based on market analysis and customer understanding
- Incorporate customer needs, price positioning, competitive benchmarking, sales and profit goals, product design trends and sourcing capabilities required to meet current and projected product objectives.
- Collaborate with design and product development teams to ensure that product development goals for design, costs and timeline objectives are met.
- Understand and optimize the different needs of each distribution channel
- Coordinate new product availability with market launch.
- Develop pricing strategies to maximize profitability while maintaining competitive positioning.
- Ensure product lines are managed strategically throughout the product lifecycle, maximizing SKU productivity while achieving sales and margin goals.
- Monitor and analyze sales data and trends to identify opportunities for growth, optimization and phase-out
- Produce and maintain sales forecasts
- Own product buying decisions and manage Open-to-Buy to achieve product mix, sales, inventory levels and margin objectives.
- Assist in developing and presenting product training programs.