Director Category Management

The Bountiful Company, a Nestlé Health Science Company, is a pure play branded leader in global nutrition, living at the intersection of science and nature. As a manufacturer, marketer and seller of vitamins, minerals, herbal and other specialty supplements, and active nutrition products, we are focused on enhancing the health and wellness of people’s lives. The Bountiful Company’s portfolio of trusted brands includes Nature's Bounty®, Solgar®, Osteo Bi-Flex®, Puritan’s Pride®, Sundown® and Ester-C®.

Inclusion and Diversity in the workplace matters at The Bountiful Company.  This includes being focused on retaining and recruiting a diverse workforce and building a culture of inclusivity.  Our goal is to create a place where people feel respected, valued and able to bring their authentic selves to work each day. 

Did we mention that we also offer excellent benefits, competitive compensation and a progressive, healthy company culture? If you’ve ever spent your workdays watching the clock, you know how important a positive work environment is for a person’s well-being. The Bountiful Company is committed to supporting wellness in all forms. And when it comes to wellness, nature is a pretty good place to start.

The Director of Category Management will lead a team of category managers across the Grocery & Alternate Channel (Field Sales) and various categories that Nestlé Health Science brands participate in including Vitamins and Nutrition.  The Director performs a valuable role in building strong partnerships with key retailers and Sales Team by developing and implementing category and shopper solutions that deliver against business objectives and customer strategies. 

This position is responsible for leading and developing category strategies that deliver sales and share growth to enable category leadership for Nestlé Health Science and be seen as a thought leader.  The Director will develop and share the Category Management process, foundations, directives, and insights for the assigned categories within the Grocery and Alternate Channel.  They will bring best practices together with other Category Leads and drive a continuous improvement process to deliver a sustaining category management approach for the organization.  This role will translate analytical and consumer/shopper insights into action and help drive strategic and tactical initiatives to achieve category growth goals.  The role will partner with the Sales Team to deliver against key business objectives and align on category (brand) and customer priorities and goals through the preparation of data, insights and analytics.  The role will report to the Vice President of Shopper, Category and Visual Merchandising. 

Additional responsibilities include:

• Lead the Field Sales Category Management team with five direct reports to successfully achieve company goals through the preparation of data, insights, analytics and category solutions to meeting customer and company strategies.
• Be responsible for managing a handful of accounts amongst the Field Sales Team as well as leading and supporting the Team within this Channel.
• Establish category strategy and category thought leadership for the Grocery Channel and Natural Channel customers by driving thought leadership through an insights to action solutions.
• Be responsible for competitive assessments and analysis for categories including assortment analysis, share gains/losses, new items and merchandising placement and post planogram assessments.  
• Strong collaboration with cross functional partners (Consumer Insights & Analytics, Sales Team, Category Management Team, Shopper Insights Team to leverage syndicated data and category & shopper insights to drive category initiatives.
• Develop modular, ad hoc, category reviews and business planning analysis to develop category and brand recommendations across the 4Ps including shelving guidelines/best practices.
• Establish and deliver best-in-class merchandising recommendations.
• Management of data tools and reporting to provide sales analytics and category performance for assigned customers.  Leveraging critical syndicated data and customer level tools and sources.   
• Strong analytical interpretation and data utilizing key tools such as IRI, POS, Advanced Consumer Data (Market Research, Consumer Decision Tree, Household Panel Data, Nielsen Data Retrieval/Analysis).
• Recruit, hire, develop, train team with diverse skillsets needed to achieve a high performing Category Management Team.
• Other assigned responsibilities by VP Shopper, Category and Visual Merchandising.

• Minimum of 12 years of Consumer Packaged Goods industry experience with 8+ years in Category Management.
• Proven leadership qualities and skills leading and managing direct reports.
• Strong prior experience working with IRI/Nielsen syndicated and panel data required.
• Strong prior experience working with regional grocery customers, such as Ahold, Albertsons, Meijer, etc.
• Prior experience working directly with account teams a must.
• Ability to work in a fast paced environment with strong flexibility and agility.
• Must work well in a team environment and have a demonstrated ability to operate at all levels within an organization.
• Proven success at business building (strategy development, category solutions leadership).