Category Specialist

Staples Canada•Richmond Hill, ON

About The Position

The Category Specialist is accountable for meeting financial sales and gross margin targets for their assigned categories. In collaboration with the Category Manager, this role assists in sourcing and building assortments, developing promotions, setting pricing, and delivering best-in-class presentation to drive sustained growth and capture market share. The role also supports programmatic customer opportunities and partners closely with Merchandise, Strategy, Planning, and Allocation teams.

Requirements

Post-secondary diploma with a focus on retail management, merchandising, and purchasing, or equivalent experience.
Understanding of basic merchandising and marketing strategies.
Commitment to dedicating necessary time to fluctuating priorities and meeting the demands of the position.
Minimum of 1-3 years of previous retail management, purchasing, or merchandising experience.

Responsibilities

Develop channel-relevant assortments leveraging analytics, industry trends, and vendor/brand insights in close collaboration with the Category Manager.
Work with the Category Manager on all line reviews.
Proactively seek out category insights from vendors and external sources.
Provide presales support to high-value/specific customer opportunities.
Support programmatic customer opportunities, including RFI, RFQ, RFP, and other customer requests.
Onboard and set up new SKUs by collecting required content from vendor partners and following established set-up guidelines.
Set and maintain pricing in line with category pricing policies and strategies.
Monitor the integrity of systems data (AS400, Sunrise, Alpha).
Work with the planogramming department to ensure inline presentation aligns with category strategies and enhances the customer shopping experience.
Collaborate with vendors to establish effective off-shelf displays that adhere to presentation criteria and balance inventory investment with sales forecasts.