SUMMARY:
Our client, a leading national business operating within the wholesale and retail sector, seeks an experienced Portfolio Merchandise Manager to translate portfolio strategy into insights-led category plans that deliver agreed sales and margin growth.
Working closely with the relevant Portfolio Executive and national, divisional and functional stakeholders, the successful candidates will coordinate the tactical and operational execution of category strategies, pricing, promotions, assortments and planograms.
Through rigorous commercial analysis and stakeholder engagement, the Portfolio Merchandise Manager will identify opportunities, monitor delivery and guide regional teams in implementing corrective action where required.
POSITION INFO:
THE PERSON
Qualifications:
- Degree in Commerce, Business, Supply Chain, Economics or a related field.
- An advanced commercial or scientific qualification would be advantageous.
Experience:
- Minimum of 7 yearsâ relevant experience within grocery, FMCG wholesale, retail or a closely aligned environment.
- Strong category management, merchandising, commercial trading or portfolio experience.
- Demonstrated experience contributing to sales and margin growth.
- Strong exposure to pricing, promotions, assortment optimisation and SKU rationalisation.
- Experience supporting or commercialising private-label products.
- Experience coordinating execution across regional and functional teams.
- Retail exposure would be advantageous.
Technical and Analytical Skills:
- Advanced Excel and commercial modelling capability.
- Experience using BI and visualisation tools such as Power BI, Tableau or Looker.
- Ability to interpret category, sales, margin and promotional data.
- Understanding of forecasting systems and automated reporting.
- Familiarity with merchandising and planning systems such as SAP or equivalent.
- Exposure to SQL, data warehouses, ETL concepts or Big Data environments would be advantageous.
- Familiarity with market-measurement sources such as Nielsen or Circana would be beneficial.
Competencies:
- Strong commercial judgement and analytical thinking.
- Ability to translate complex information into clear commercial recommendations.
- Sound understanding of promotional economics, price elasticity and assortment optimisation.
- Strategic and practical problem-solving ability.
- Strong stakeholder influence and executive communication.
- Customer- and shopper-focused.
- Detail-orientated and able to prioritise in a fast-moving environment.
- Resilient and adaptable to change.
- Strong programme and change-management capability.
THE ROLECommercial Performance:
- Review and coordinate category trading plans to support sales, margin and average basket-value targets.
- Monitor performance against plan and prior periods.
- Analyse variances and recommend corrective action for underperforming categories and SKUs.
- Identify and implement short-term commercial uplift initiatives.
- Monitor competitor pricing and recommend appropriate tactical responses.
- Track the results of implemented initiatives and apply relevant learnings.
Assortment and Space Planning:
- Conduct SKU-level performance reviews to identify low-velocity and low-margin products.
- Recommend the consolidation or delisting of underperforming SKUs.
- Identify high-potential products and opportunities for further distribution or scale.
- Coordinate localised assortment and planogram changes with regional and store operations teams.
- Monitor sales per metre and sales per SKU to improve space productivity.
Pricing, Promotions and Trade Management:
- Prepare business cases for temporary and permanent price changes.
- Model the projected volume, revenue, margin and promotional cost of proposed initiatives.
- Coordinate pricing and promotional strategies.
- Monitor promotional performance against agreed targets.
- Recommend adjustments to improve future promotional effectiveness.
Analytics and Commercial Insights:
- Maintain and interpret dashboards covering sales, margin, basket value, availability and SKU productivity.
- Analyse changes in performance arising from pricing, promotions, distribution, competitor activity and seasonality.
- Convert findings into clear recommendations for the Portfolio Executive and other stakeholders.
- Provide category, assortment, private-label and forecast reporting.
Private Label and Product Development:
- Assess the commercial viability of private-label products.
- Support costing, margin modelling, expected sales volumes and initial pricing recommendations.
- Monitor private-label sales and margin performance.
- Recommend assortment, pricing or promotional interventions to achieve agreed targets.
Supply and Availability:
- Support decisions relating to the most appropriate source of supply.
- Evaluate distribution-centre stock, direct supply and drop-shipment options.
- Monitor availability exceptions and identify commercial risks resulting from supply constraints.
Stakeholder Coordination:
- Coordinate category execution across Regional Merchandise, Marketing, Supply Chain, eCommerce and Store Operations.
- Facilitate regular engagements with regional and operational teams.
- Resolve execution challenges and support consistent implementation across the business.
- Translate commercial insights into concise, practical briefs for field teams.
Continuous Improvement and Risk Management:
- Design and coordinate controlled commercial experiments involving pricing, promotions and display formats.
- Document successful approaches and develop practical playbooks.
- Identify risks relating to supply, competition and margin erosion.
- Develop mitigation proposals and escalate significant strategic or systemic issues.
- Document standard operating procedures and share best practices across teams.
This role will suit commercially minded category or merchandising professionals who are highly analytical but remain strongly focused on practical retail execution.
