Senior E-Commerce Merchant

The Sr Merchant - E-Commerce is responsible developing and managing Acehardware.com’s merchandise assortment plan, including RSC based skus and those from non-RSC sources including Acenet direct vendors, Emery Jensen skus, and ecommerce hub partners. The Sr. E-Commerce Merchant is responsible for the negotiating promotional offerings for this mix, including any vendor provided item cost concessions, retailer credits, and/or vendor promotional payments. The Sr. E-Commerce merchant is also a key stakeholder in driving go-forward UX strategy in partnership with IT, UX, Ops and Content teams. Not only is the merchant team a stakeholder in driving improved CVR through non-merchandising UX, but has direct responsibility for improving findability through search/browse, creating compelling and intuitive promotions, scrutinizing and elevating product content/seo, with an overarching focus on reducing friction throughout the entire shopping experience, agnostic of platform (desktop, mobile, App) or fulfilment channel (ship, delivery, pick-up).  

Main Responsibilities:

Strategy and Planning

• Develop and Execute strategies for the online channel around the 4 p’s of Marketing-Execute product, pricing and placement strategy across the entire acehardware.com platform while driving profitable sales through all aspects of Internet assortment planning (ie core basic/omni channel skus ) internet only skus, vendor direct skus, and clearance skus, that materially advance/shape the Ace brand and online business

• Act as a thought leader, mentor, coach within the online team

• Relentlessly maintain a critical eye for all thing’s user experience, with goal of removing as much friction across the purchase funnel as possible

• Improve Site Findability; through Search & Browse optimization activities

• Review KPI & web behavior metrics to generate data driven insights & actions

• Manage product recommendation, basket builder, and trade-up strategies

• Drive future online only assortment expansion strategies via drop ship

• Analyze the ecommerce market to develop understandings of market trends and competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and strategies.

Develop and Manage Online Merchandising Assortment

• Identify sku mix and product assortment offerings from within retail support center based sku mix.

• Negotiate additional product and brand assortments from non-RSC programs—including Acenet direct vendors, Emery Jensen sku mix, and ecommerce hub offerings.

• Grow category sales while respecting current retail store assortment mixes, pricing model, and retail profitability

• Work cross functionally with the Ace Internal Merchandising team to collaborate within existing vendor relationships while supporting and respecting current contracts and program parameters

Promotional Planning

• Plan and negotiate all item level online promotional activity.

• Negotiate all online item level pricing concessions including item cost concessions, vendor subsidies and credits, and vendor advertising placement revenue.

• Collaborate with existing promotional team to support integrated omni channel promotions.

• Collaborate with ecommerce marketing and analytics team to determine timing and consumer discount structure for site wide promotional offerings.

• Collaborate with creative and design team to bring various promotional offerings to life within the acehardware.com platform as well as email support initiatives.

Content Assets

• Work directly with vendors to harvest effective consumer content for product offerings in order to maximize consumer experience and sales potential.

• Collaborate with existing content team to review product content and images for the online experience.

Retailer Communication

• Create and publish retailer centric monthly acehardware.com alerts to provide awareness of promotional direction of acehardware.com channel for retailers.

• Create, maintain and publish monthly promotional summary sheet on Acenet in order to provide retailers continual and updated access to special retails, costs and credits.

• Collaborate with Promotional team to provide monthly acehardware.com content within the regularly published monthly Win the Month Planner.

• Coordinate with Ace Care Center for calls and e-mails related to respective category questions and inquiries

Inventory/Supply Chain Support

• Communicate and collaborate with inventory and Merchandising team on acehardware.com specific promotions and their respective inventory requirements.<