Exciting opportunity for a Category Manager - Convenience Retail to join this global Energy company for a 12 month maternity cover contract.
The UK Mobility business has a company owned presence of over 525 service stations. As a Non-Fuel Retail business, Convenience Retail UK sources goods and services across a broad spectrum of own-label and consumer packaged goods across 13 product categories.
Mobility is a core face of the business. It touches the lives of 30 million customers every single day. This makes Mobility a primary driver for the brand. It is an exciting time to be working in Mobility UK as it evolves from a fuels retailer' to mobility retailer', innovating to meet changing customer expectations in respect to convenience, quality, digitalization, and services.
Within UK Convenience Retail & services we look beyond the forecourt, forming strategic partnerships with leading brands to offer a broader range of products and services, helping customers optimise their fast-paced modern lives. In the UK, our CR alliance partnerships cover a wide range of areas incl. Costa Express, Waitrose, Co-op & Budgens, Karcher (car wash), Uber Eats and Amazon and InPost Lockers.
This is an exciting opportunity to join a high performing team at a pivotal time, as Convenience retail needs to double down and grow faster as EV infrastructure takes time to embed and optimize, against a backdrop of declining volume in the fuels space.
The Role:
The purpose of this role will be to manage assigned Categories and/or Alliance Partners for the UK business, ensuring the key KPI metrics are met.
This will require best-in-class category management skills and the successful candidate will be required to build extensive knowledge of their categories and the wider dynamics of the retail environment.
He/she will be expected to define, shape, manage and monitor their categories; working with internal and external stakeholders to optimise an ever-evolving offer whilst delivering against business targets. Pivotal to the role will be interaction with suppliers and partners, negotiating then managing the execution of annual Joint Business Plans.
Key role activities and approach:
- Manage the Category performance and P&L against key KPI deliverables.
- Thorough analysis and understanding of the category and market dynamics - measuring the category performance and maintaining an optimal balance between the long-term view and business demands of the annual targets.
- Developing profitable category business plans and ensuring all performance levers are optimized eg range, merchandising, price, promotions, operational excellence etc
- Owning the relationships and negotiation of trading terms with suppliers or alliance partners and identifying opportunities to drive efficiencies. Building appropriate JBPs with the supply base.
- As part of a global business, work collaboratively with the global category management team to unlock broader opportunities
- Develop and implement appropriate seasonal or event driven activities to maximise incremental sales and revenue
- Effectively manage relationships with broader stakeholders and other teams within the business to deliver against our objectives
- Provide an agile response when required to respond to changing market and business dynamics.
The Candidate:
- Experience as a Category Manager or Buyer in a retail environment
- Result driven mindset; able to deliver against or support delivery of stretching business targets
- Strong commercial acumen, strong understanding of sales, margin and profitability metrics, supported with understanding of all factors that can influence performance
- Analytical skills, robust analytical skills demonstrable across different tools with high attention to detail
- Excellent relationship management skills; able to adapt approach to different audiences or circumstances
- Collaborative; able to work across multiple external and internal touch points, an effective team player and contributor
- Agility, able to respond at speed to changing business demands, reacting to challenging or unforeseen circumstances in a calm and measured manner, solving a problem firsthand if one should arise
This needs combining with a positive attitude and an ability to work within a large, globally dispersed project team in a multi-cultural environment. You also need to be a self-starter, a logical thinker and a quick learner, with strong initiative and excellent communication, interpersonal and presentation skills, able to write clearly and concisely. We believe in equality of opportunity for all job applicants regardless of gender, marital status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, creed or religion, disability, sexual orientation or age. Specialising within Energy Trading, Oil & Gas, Financial Markets and TV & Entertainment, Eaglecliff Recruitment is ISO accredited, a Member of REC and listed within the top 4% for Financial stability by Dun & Bradstreet. Please telephone for an immediate response or email your CV for a reply within one hour. Eaglecliff Ltd is acting in the capacity of an employment agency for permanent recruitment and an employment business for contractor resourcing