Merchandising Director - Category Management, Jewelry

Blue Nile•New York, NY

About The Position

Blue Nile is seeking a Director of Category Management, Jewelry to lead the strategy, performance, and evolution of its jewelry categories. The role owns assortment strategy, product architecture, financial performance, lifecycle management, and merchandising expression. Using merchant judgment, customer insight, competitive intelligence, and analytics, the Director will maximize existing sales and develop incremental revenue opportunities. The role will create a curated, differentiated assortment that strengthens Blue Nile’s brand point of view while meeting revenue, margin, productivity, and inventory objectives. The Director will own category vision and commercial performance; develop multi-year strategies and assortment architecture; identify customer, competitive, and product opportunities; and make recommendations on category investments and assortment changes. The role will guide how products and stories are presented across digital and retail channels, including category pages, search, recommendations, marketing, promotions, and retail customer conversations. The Director will lead assortment curation, product development and newness strategies, product launches, and lifecycle decisions. They will own category performance against business targets, partner with Planning and Finance on forecasts and investment strategies, and work across a broad range of teams to align priorities and customer outcomes. The role also leads, coaches, and develops a high-performing Category Management team and builds organizational capabilities and processes for effective category management.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in business, Economics, Analytics, Marketing, or a related field.
8–12+ years of experience in merchandising.
Strategic mindset and ability to translate complex data into actionable business strategies.
Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with shifting priorities.
Expertise in pricing strategy, margin analysis, and product mix optimization.
Strong analytical and quantitative skills.
Proficiency with Excel, SQL, Tableau, or similar platforms.
Exceptional leadership skills and experience managing and developing high-performing teams.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to collaborate effectively across departments.

Responsibilities

Own the vision, strategy, and commercial performance for Blue Nile jewelry categories.
Develop multi-year category strategies that define category roles, growth opportunities, differentiation, and portfolio evolution.
Establish assortment architecture across product segments, price points, materials, styles, and customer needs.
Identify category white space and turn customer, competitive, and performance insights into product opportunities.
Maintain deep knowledge of customers, products, competitors, and emerging jewelry trends; serve as the category authority.
Build business cases and recommendations for category investments, assortment changes, and growth opportunities.
Partner with Site Merchandising, Creative, Marketing, Technology, and Retail to make product selection inspiring, understandable, and intuitive online and in stores.
Set product priorities for category pages, search, sort, recommendations, storytelling, marketing, and promotional placements.
Ensure hero products and key assortment stories receive appropriate visibility while balancing proven core products with strategic newness.
Translate product differences into clear merchandising stories and provide Retail partners with product priorities and category stories for Client Advisors.
Lead assortment development, balancing core business, newness, innovation, and distinctive products.
Determine assortment breadth, depth, mix, price architecture, and SKU productivity needed to achieve category objectives.
Analyze category, collection, style, price point, metal, stone, and SKU performance to determine whether to expand, maintain, reposition, or exit products.
Edit and evolve the assortment so each product has a clear role and the portfolio reflects a distinct Blue Nile point of view.
Manage product lifecycle from introduction through growth, maturity, and exit.
Balance data-driven decision making with merchant judgment and understanding of customer emotional connection.
Partner with Product Development, Design, Sourcing, and other teams to translate category opportunities into product strategies and development briefs.
Define opportunities for new collections, extensions of successful concepts, and evolution of the core assortment.
Create assortment frameworks and commercial guardrails for product development, including price architecture and product positioning.
Lead merchandising strategy for product and collection launches, including assortment, depth, positioning, storytelling, and customer experience.
Establish launch success criteria and use post-launch performance to inform future development.
Conduct competitive assortment, pricing, product, and positioning reviews; translate marketplace insights into recommendations.
Own category performance against revenue, margin, inventory productivity, and other business targets.
Partner with Planning and Finance on category forecasts and investment strategies.
Assess category performance, diagnose drivers, and establish action plans addressing opportunities and risks.
Understand the relationships among assortment, price, demand, inventory, margin, and customer behavior.
Partner with Demand Planning to align inventory investments with category priorities and demand opportunities.
Translate business performance into clear recommendations and decisive actions for senior leadership.
Lead across Merchandising, Planning, Product Development, Design, Sourcing, Marketing, Creative, Finance, Operations, Technology, and Retail.
Establish clear category priorities and ensure partners understand the strategy, commercial opportunity, and desired customer outcome.
Influence senior stakeholders through product vision, analysis, and recommendations.
Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Category Management team.
Set objectives, expectations, and accountability across the organization.
Develop team members’ merchant capabilities, including product judgment, analytics, assortment building, financial acumen, and executive communication.
Build organizational capabilities and processes that enable increasingly sophisticated category management.