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Category Manager - Food

Employer
Michael Page Sales
Location
England, Berkshire
Salary
Competitive
Closing date
8 Feb 2022

View more

Business Sector
Food & Drink
Contract Type
Permanent
Hours
Full Time
Function
Category Management

Job Details



Support the Category work, insights and ambitions in the UK for a passionate and successful family owned fresh food company. Take full ownership / define & execute the category strategy to help build commercial directive & growth.

Client Details

An international business with a passion for great food made with quality ingredients. It is an Italian, family-run, owner-managed business. Operating in more than 60 countries, with annual turnover approaching €1BN p.a. Italy's #1 Fresh Pasta Supplier

As well as Fresh Pasta, this business operates in the Chilled Ready Meals and Fresh Pasta Sauce categories. An exciting innovation pipeline and plans to expand into other categories.

Heavily been investing in attracting new shoppers, leading the Category growth and has ambitious plans for future growth.

The role & company offers the opportunity to work in a growing category, with innovation, with Brand, with Own Label, in different channels and make a real difference in key retailers. It also offers the chance of interaction with stakeholders at all levels of the business

Description

What you will do as Category Manager

You will be tasked with supporting the team with market, category and shopper insight to aid the UK ambitions across all channels and to own the Category agenda (internally and externally) in Convenience. You will take ownership for data and market reporting and will have significant interaction with internal and external stakeholders. Specifically you will:

Category Management
  • Deliver distribution, range, space and siting metrics to drive business growth
  • Provide actionable, insight-based, recommendations, to ensure growth ahead of the market
  • Lead range review work in Convenience. Support this across other channels
  • Identify key category and customer issues and opportunities and generate the insight and solutions to resolve these
  • Act as an integral partner to our sales and marketing teams by providing category insight that helps shape strategies & tactics to deliver the annual plan
  • Establish effective relationships within customers, becoming their go-to category advisor
  • Contribute to the overall category agenda and strategy


Reporting & Category Benchmarking
  • Own market and category reporting. Build and maintain regular reports. Analyse, interpret and present data from multiple sources to internal stakeholders & external customers
  • Perform analysis on multiple sources to identify trends, create insights, and to quickly identify category opportunities & risks
  • Inspire others (internally and externally) to make informed strategic decisions with market and category insights
  • Track retailer and competitor activity in the marketplace
  • Work with data partners to maintain the databases, ensuring the data used is accurate


Insights
  • Create & maintain a bank of relevant (market, retailer, shopper, Category, Food trends) Insights
  • Drive understanding of the Convenience / Online Channels and Shoppers internally and build effective Category plans to best meet the shopper missions in these Channels


Strategy & Planning
  • Work up retailer Category Strategy with internal stakeholders to optimise Category sales. Ensure plans are aligned with the Commercial strategy
  • Inform, shape and enrich Customer plans through market, category and shopper insight


Profile
  • Analytical thinking and control of multiple data sources, ensuring clear performance narrative delivered regularly internally/externally
  • Ability to build and maintain lasting internal and external relationships & to present to all levels
  • Commercial acumen and knowledge of the UK FMCG market
  • Strong understanding of Category Management principles. Ability to demonstrate the importance of Distribution, Space & Range
  • Desire for growth - both for the business and for themselves within the role
  • Team player. Effective working within a small team
  • Expert with data (IRI, Kantar. Nectar SIP an advantage). Effective, however, where data is scarce
  • Excellent IT (Excel, Powerpoint) and presentation skills
  • Builds trust; reliable; flexible, able to prioritise effectively
  • Self-starter, good work ethic. 'Can do, will do' attitude
  • Experience of working in a customer / client facing role would be a benefit


The Person: Experience
  • Demonstable Category Management function, ideally in FMCG / Food / Chilled Food
  • Would suit either a Category Executive keen to step up into their 1st Category Manager role or someone relatively recent to Category Management wanting to expand their experience
  • Can demonstrate a good understanding of how to use data and insight to influence positive change in retailers: eg for range, distribution, siting, strategy


MUST BE ABLE TO ACCESS BERKSHIRE OFFICE 3-4 DAYS PER WEEK

Job Offer

A competitive package. A family orientated, passionate & collaborative environment, looking to extend thier journey with this hire!

Company

Michael Page Sales UK is a leading professional recruitment consultancy covering permanent, interim and contract recruitment. We have UK wide coverage with ten offices located in London, Weybridge, Reading, Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester, St Albans, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow. The core markets we serve are Consumer, Business Services, Media, IT/Telco, Financial Services, Healthcare and Technical Sales, with a dedicated person or team in each location specialising in each of these sectors. The clients we work with are as diverse as the candidates we represent; from Blue Chips to SMEs, and Sales Execs to Sales Directors. Our Consultants are typically from relevant sales backgrounds giving first hand experience of the roles we recruit for. We pride ourselves on delivering unrivalled service levels to our candidates and our clients, our track record of success over the past 20 years means we stand out.

Within our Consumer Sales Division we have consultants within each of the 10 offices who dedicate themselves to this sector and no other. Our specialist capability is demonstrated further as we focus on sub sectors such as food, drink, household, foodservice, consumer electronics, apparel, health & beauty, consumer healthcare, pet and sports. Some of our key clients include Colgate, Beiersdorf, Dr Oetker, Johnson & Johnson, Matthew Clark, PZ Cussons, Kellogg’s, 2 Sisters, Samsung, Seven Seas, Twinings, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, SC Johnson, Warburtons, InBev, Kettle Chips, Hallmark, Luxottica, McCain, Britvic, General Mills, and Molson Coors to name but a few!

Michael Page Sales UK is part of Michael Page International with operations in the UK, Continental Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas. As well as looking for high quality candidates for our clients, we are also always looking for top talent to work for us

Join in the discussion in our LinkedIn group Michael Page Sales - UK

 

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