Category Analyst - Lighters

BIC•Norwalk, CA

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Category Analyst supports U.S. category development initiatives in the Lighters category through data analysis, reporting, and execution tracking. The role provides analytical support for customer meetings, promotional planning, pricing strategy, and new item launches, while maintaining key trackers and performance dashboards. Working closely with the Category Development Manager, the Analyst helps ensure data supports the selling story and customer sell-in. The position is part of Commercial Strategy and reports to the Director, Business Development. The Analyst serves as a category data expert, preparing customer-facing analysis and presentation materials, evaluating promotional and pricing performance, tracking execution of category initiatives, monitoring competitors, and supporting new item forecasts and post-launch analysis. The role also analyzes syndicated, retailer POS, and internal sales data and publishes a monthly category trends recap.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Marketing, or a related field.
2–4 years of experience in CPG analytics, category management, sales analytics, or a related field.
Experience working with syndicated data platforms such as NielsenIQ or Circana.
Strong Excel skills, including pivot tables, lookups, and data modeling.
PowerPoint proficiency.
High attention to detail and strong organizational skills.
Ability to manage multiple requests in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

Serve as the category data expert on customer trends and market performance.
Prepare analytical materials and data summaries for customer meetings.
Respond to ad hoc customer analysis requests.
Support customer presentations with data, charts, and relevant storytelling.
Analyze promotional effectiveness, including lift, ROI, and post-event performance.
Analyze pricing to evaluate elasticity, competitive gaps, and margin impact.
Maintain and update the promotional tracker to compare planned and actual activity.
Identify risks and opportunities related to promotional cadence and pricing strategies.
Track SKU rationalization execution and progress against plans.
Maintain distribution and void tracking.
Track key initiatives for sales compliance and progress.
Monitor competitor promotional activity and pricing shifts.
Summarize competitive trends, new item launches, and business implications.
Create new item launch forecasts by channel to inform projections.
Maintain launch tracking for distribution, velocity, and performance metrics.
Support post-launch reporting and performance scorecards.
Analyze syndicated data, retailer POS, and internal sales data.
Publish a monthly category trends recap explaining channel drivers.
Prepare ad hoc shipment data pulls relevant to key initiatives and tracking.