Associate Category Manager - Health and Wellness

Walgreens•Deerfield, IL

About The Position

The Associate Category Manager collaborates with Category Managers to select and purchase merchandise and services across a limited number of categories at the lowest possible cost. Purchasing decisions are informed by analysis of business economics and conditions, supply sources, merchandise requirements, and company policy. The role helps provide merchandising, promotional, and distribution plans and programs so merchandise meets consumer and store needs. With direction or input from a Category Manager, the Associate Category Manager develops and implements merchandising techniques and procedures. The role plans and recommends sales, gross-profit, inventory-control, and merchandise-turnover objectives; develops merchandising and sales programs; negotiates and reviews buying contracts; analyzes market, competitive, customer-perception, historical, and year-to-date performance data; and recommends pricing and category performance goals. It works with Store Experience and merchandise planning to develop category insights, uses data to recommend category initiatives to Category Managers and Divisional Merchandise Managers, builds knowledge of Walgreens and WBA private brands, and helps project sales forecasts and gross-profit levels. Walgreens serves customers and patients through approximately 8,500 stores across the United States and Puerto Rico. The company reports approximately 220,000 team members, including nearly 90,000 healthcare service providers, and describes its commitment to pharmacy, retail, and health services and to building trusted relationships that create healthier futures.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree and at least 2 years of experience in at least two of the following: retail, procurement/purchasing, merchandising, vendor relations, pharmacy operations, or retail marketing; alternatively, a high school diploma/GED and at least 4 years of experience in at least two of those areas.
Experience working with P&L concepts, including revenue, cost of goods sold, gross-profit margin, operating expenses, and income.
Knowledge of customer-centric retailing principles and analytics of customer purchase behavior.
At least 2 years of experience developing merchandising, vendor-relations, and marketing programs in the retail business.
Intermediate Microsoft Excel skills, such as using SUM, formatting cells, inserting charts, sorting, setting headers and footers, and print scaling.
Basic Microsoft PowerPoint skills, such as managing slides, editing text, inserting tables or notes, moving objects, and running a slide show.
Basic Microsoft Word skills, such as editing and formatting text, setting margins, sorting, inserting bullets and images, using find and replace, spell check, track changes, and print functions.
At least 1 year of experience in cross-functional team leadership.

Responsibilities

Plan, develop, and recommend sales, gross-profit, inventory-control, and merchandise-turnover objectives for assigned departments and items.
Develop and recommend merchandising, display, advertising, distribution, packaging, and sales plans and programs for assigned items and merchandise departments.
Negotiate buying contracts for categories or subsets of categories as directed by the Divisional Merchandise Manager or Category Manager, and review contracts with the Category Manager.
Analyze market, competitive, and customer-perception data and recommend price levels to the Divisional Merchandise Manager and Category Manager.
Review and analyze historical and year-to-date category performance data; recommend category performance goals and manage assigned category performance.
Work with Store Experience and merchandise planning to build and review category insights.
Use data to recommend planograms, ROTO spots, promotional programs, merchandising assortments, forecasts, and other category initiatives to Category Managers and Divisional Merchandise Managers.
Identify insights from data and recommend programs to division leadership.
Develop an understanding of Walgreens and WBA private brands, including assortment, projected sales forecasts, gross-profit levels, and merchandising and promotional programs.
Work with the Category Manager and/or Divisional Merchandise Manager to project sales forecasts and gross-profit levels in assigned categories.