Senior Director, Merchandising

Position Overview

The Sr Dir, Merchandising for Piggly Wiggly Midwest is responsible for leading, organizing, and articulating the near and long-term strategic plans for the merchandising team. The Sr Dir, Merchandising will provide leadership and direction to develop strategy and create sales and margin-driving programs and events that lead to strong sales for Piggly Wiggly corporate stores retail, Franchise sales & gross profit targets, and any additional independent retailer targets. Responsible for the retail go to market strategy and execution. This includes leading the Advertising decisions on the weekly print Ad, investment level to drive customer traffic, when and where to invest in additional media buys and reacting to the effectiveness and customer trends. . The Sr Dir, Merchandising will lead merchandising teams to ensure the integrity and execution of merchandising initiatives and business development plans for categories. The Sr Dir, Merchandising is responsible for the merchandising P&L and overall margin contribution. The Sr Dir, Merchandising will interact directly with vendors and suppliers to build relationships and negotiate best-in-class cost and promotional support for the company and our Independent customers. The Sr Dir, Merchandising will lead and implement category strategies, leveraging scale, building strategic vendor relationships to support financial growth, and ensuring regional customer needs are met. The Sr Dir, Merchandising will lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams to meet the needs of the ever-changing competitive landscape through innovation, strategic planning, and continued development and training for merchandising teams.

Job Description

Description

• Strategy Implementation/Plan of Action: Set goals and strategic direction for the business, ensuring alignment with broader business goals and vision. Responsible for leading merchandising teams with a customer-first mindset and ensuring regional needs and selling opportunities are fully embedded in strategies and target setting. Drive strategic negotiations with external vendors to build portfolio share and build long-term strategic relationships with suppliers and manufacturers. Execute category planning process across product portfolio of responsibility, including development and implementation of category plans; leveraging insights in order to formulate key strategies and category initiatives to achieve incremental sales and margin growth. Responsible for negotiating cost, assortment, and promotional strategies reflective of regional Independent customer needs. Develop recommended pricing strategy for Independent Retail Customers to ensure delivery of agreed-upon gross margin targets. Develop annual category plans, which include current situation analysis, vision/strategy, specific category plans & budgets.
• Financial Management: Manage a full P&L, including planning, forecasting, and driving growth for the category, possessing a complete understanding of internal and external variables that impact the business. Perform monthly verification of plans and provide an explanation for variances in budgeted sales/gross profit & other metrics, as well as provide projections for upcoming months. Accountable for the strategic development, planning, costing, execution, and financial performance of assigned categories across the total business. Develop plans to close gaps and improve sale /margin performance year on year. Develop recommended retail pricing guidelines in conjunction with the Vice President for stores to optimize category profitability and establish suggested retail prices within these guidelines in balance with cost and agreed-upon gross margin goals. Review competitive cost and pricing information and lead negotiations with vendors/brokers for best cost and targeted margin performance.
• Oversight & Execution: Generate and implement strategies to drive business improvements, innovation, and scale within the category and across the Independent Retail business. Identify industry trends relevant to customer selection and experience leveraging competitive insights and internal and external benchmarks, and syndicated data. Collaborate on Sales, Marketing, and Merchandising initiatives with Promotional Planning Managers and Commercial teams to ensure regional needs including seasonal selling and local events, are included in overall strategy and vendor negotiations. Innovate and implement new customer and vendor programs. Share market intelligence, and best practices and provide category expertise to improve cost, drive efficiencies and minimize potential supply chain risks. Provide direction/management of all assigned categories in the areas of cost, assortment, and promotional strategies. Proactively assess and manage commodity market risk to the organization.