Sr. Associate Merchant

Office Depot•Boca Raton, FL

1d•$79,000 - $95,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Sr. Associate Merchant associate leverages consumer insights, market trends, and new product development to build curated, customer-driven assortments and service solutions. This position partners closely with key stakeholders to understand the division strategies and financial goals based on the strategic category plan to ensure that overall product development and direction delivers in-store, catalog, and online programs that are competitive and differentiated. The role involves working with suppliers to set up new items and maintain item integrity, content, and web attributes. It also requires partnering cross-functionally to ensure customer-centric solutions and to improve product mix and shopping experience. The associate will be tasked with optimizing assortments and catalogs to maximize trade-up, solutions, micro-assortments, and identify gaps by customer vertical/segment. Maintaining cross-reference files, good/better/best assortments, and upsell/cross-sell strategies are also key. This role will have the opportunity to fully manage and develop the strategy for a sub-category. This role requires a thought leader who will bring an independent perspective while effectively building collaborative solutions with key stakeholders across the company, partnering with content, ecommerce, inventory management, private brand, and pricing and promotion teams. This position has decision-making authority within the scope of work and categories assigned. The role requires a comprehensive understanding of all current and future paths to purchase, necessitating knowledge of key drivers including retail store format optimization and brick & mortar shopping experience, web dynamics, digital marketing impacts, and mobile experience, and contract B2B sales motion, pricing strategies, and vertical/customer segmentation.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree (B.A/B.S)
Business, Merchandising, Operations
5-7+ years experience. (3+ years progressive merchandising plus other equivalent related experience)
Minimum three years merchandising experience required.
Strong leader with strategic business management skills, who can appropriately shift between tactical and strategic perspectives.
Will need to be results oriented, seek empowerment, inquisitive, comfortable with ambiguity and possess versatile communication styles
Cross-functional strategic vision: a willingness to see business opportunities from the perspective of the whole company as opposed to solely the perspective of his/her functional area
Team player with strong interpersonal skills, including a demonstrated ability to successfully manage multiple internal partner and vendor relationships
Excellent communication and presentation skills. Demonstrated ability to write, speak and present information effectively and persuasively across multiple communication settings

Nice To Haves

Finance, marketing, product development, procurement, services and operations background beneficial

Responsibilities

Performs market research to gain an in-depth knowledge of products, vendor capabilities, industry trends and emerging innovation
Partners with Private Brand to optimize the portfolio to offer unique value to our customers through new development and supplier sourcing opportunities.
Optimizes the product and services portfolio to drive consumer demand, market share, sales and profitability, grounded in market and consumer understanding.
Manages assortment of products and services, determining optimal product mix based on category goals, performance, and designated category roles.
Works with cross-functional partners to ensure exceptional execution of assortment strategies.
Responsible to identify and initiate vendor setup and maintenance working with Merchandising Operations.
Responsible for overseeing item integrity, including new item set up, content and web attributes with support teams.
Works with suppliers to develop new product assortments by vertical and segment and set up new items and maintain item integrity, content and web attributes.
Ensures Web and catalog execution.