Senior Category Manager

Walgreens • Deerfield, IL

6d

About The Position

The Senior Category Manager is responsible for managing revenue and overall profits and losses (P&L) for the most complex and/or multiple groups categories. This role will own the end-to-end business performance for a significant portion of Walgreens' Food & Beverage portfolio, with accountability for sales, profitability, market share, and long-term category growth. Operating with a general manager mindset, this leader develops and executes customer-centric category strategies that drive revenue, EBITDA, and return on invested capital. The ideal candidate is customer-obsessed and commercially minded, with a proven ability to identify opportunities, close performance gaps, and drive growth through data-driven decision making. They excel at translating insights into compelling business stories that influence senior leaders, cross-functional partners, and suppliers, balancing near-term performance with long-term category growth and profitability.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree and at least 6 years’ experience in two or more of the following: retail, procurement/purchasing, merchandising, vendor relations, pharmacy operations, or retail marketing OR a high school diploma/GED and at least 9 years of experience in two or more of the following: retail, procurement/purchasing, merchandising, vendor relations, pharmacy operations, or retail marketing.
• At least 2 years’ experience working with P&L concepts – revenue, cogs, gross profit margin, operating expenses and income
• Knowledge of customer centric retailing principles and the analytics of customer purchase behavior.
• At least 4 years of experience developing strategic programs in merchandising, vendor relations, and marketing in the retail business.
• Knowledge of retail business financial concepts, to include penny profit market, mark-up percents, turns and ROI.
• Experience collaborating on analysis for market potential evaluation, pricing, and promotions.
• Knowledge of marketing and promotional strategies and methods.
• Intermediate level skill in Microsoft Excel (for example: using SUM function, setting borders, setting column width, inserting charts, using text wrap, sorting, setting headers and footers and/or print scaling).
• Basic skill level in Microsoft PowerPoint (for example: inserting, rearranging, hiding and deleting slides, navigating between slides, increasing list level, adding, centering and editing text, changing views, inserting a table or a note, moving objects, printing outline view and/or running a slide show).
• Basic level skill in Microsoft Word (for example: opening a document, cutting, pasting and aligning text, selecting font type and size, changing margins and column width, sorting, inserting bullets, pictures and dates, using find and replace, undo, spell check, track changes, review pane and/or print functions).
• At least 2 years of experience contributing to financial decisions in the workplace.
• At least 3 years of direct leadership, indirect leadership and/or cross-functional team leadership.
• Willing to travel up to 10 % of the time for business purposes (within state and out of state).
• Experience managing people, projects and/or cross functional teams.
• At least 2 years of experience in negotiating deals.

Responsibilities

• Oversees development and determines merchandising, display, advertising, distribution, packaging and sales plans and programs for highly complex items and multiple merchandise departments.
• Negotiates buying contracts and obtains most advantageous pricing.
• Manages day-to-day vendor relationships and growth opportunities.
• Uses market, competitive, and customer perceptions analyses to set and adjust item price levels.
• Aggressively manages category performance by establishing category goals and building financial models to predict ROIC.
• Utilizes innovative methods to predict performance of more complex merchandise.
• Demonstrates category ownership by creating and defending all planogram category strategies and decisions with sound analytics.
• Delegates analytic tasks to key support functions and synthesizes results.
• Provides division leadership with business case for promotions/ROTO spots, including promotional productivity forecast and product performance sensitivity analyses.
• Manages the translation of marketing and consumer insights into innovative assortment merchandising decisions to drive return on most complex categories.
• Champions the weekly category meetings with merchant support to manage category performance.
• Maintains an understanding of Walgreens and WBA private brands, including assortment and projected sales forecasts, gross profit level, and merchandising and promotional programs.
• Works with the DMM to project sales forecases and gross profit levels within the assigned categories.
• Cultivates team moral, motivation, and loyalty through continuous training and mentorship, setting obtainable performance goals, providing clear communication and constructive feedback.

Benefits

• To review benefits, please click here jobs.walgreens.com/benefits. If you are applying on a job board or unable to click on the link, please copy and paste this URL into your browser jobs.walgreens.com/bene

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior