Core Responsibilities
1) Strategic Vendor & Commercial Management
- Develop and maintain strategic relationships with key vendors across East Malaysia, ensuring alignment with commercial targets and service level expectations.
- Lead high-level negotiation of trading terms, promotions, and long-term business agreements in coordination with national category strategies.
- Identify relevant local vendors that have Products that appeal to East Malaysia customers as well as guide vendors on the onboarding process and promotion of local assortments that complement national plans.
- Drive structured vendor performance reviews to evaluate fulfilment, sales contribution, promotional effectiveness, provide feedback from operations & supply chain and take corrective actions where necessary to drive improvement.
- Oversee and support the resolution of financial disputes and fulfillment issues escalated from the regional merchandising teams, vendor or operations/supply chain.
2) Category Planning & Growth Execution
- Formulate and execute end-to-end category plans tailored to East Malaysia's unique market dynamics, optimizing assortment, pricing, and promotional mix.
- Guide and approve new product listings, planogram compliance and vendor partnerships proposed by regional teams, ensuring relevance, profitability, and long-term growth potential.
- Ensure complete and timely documentation for new listings (NPP forms, SAP setup, pricing files, etc.) is submitted and followed through.
- Collaborate with central merchandising, SRD, and the Fresh Food team to coordinate regional rollouts, planogram assortment & compliance as well as innovation pipelines.
- Rationalize assortment by identifying SKUs that underperform and coordinating delisting or replacement proposals with HQ and vendors.
- Provide strategic direction on POSM execution, store layout optimization, and promotional compliance, ensuring in-store excellence.
- Identify margin improvement opportunities through cost negotiation, assortment rationalization, and supply optimization.
- Guide teams on selecting sustainable & customer-driven SKUs, avoiding one-hit wonders or short-lived trial products.
3) Regional Market Development & Localization
- Analyze regional market trends, consumer preferences, and competitor assortments to identify local category opportunities.
- Coordinate trials or pilots for new local vendors and products, monitoring performance closely during test periods.
- Build vendor pipelines by scouting local suppliers through store visits, trade shows, and referrals from branch teams.
- Work with team to assess feasibility and risk of onboarding new regional vendors, ensuring capability to meet 7-Eleven standards.
- Advocate East Malaysia's assortment needs to HQ merchandising department, ensuring regional relevance is prioritized to support rollout of local favorites across multiple branches or regions where viable.
4) Operational Alignment & Execution Oversight
- Act as the key merchandising liaison between headquarters and the East Malaysia branches, ensuring seamless translation of strategic plans into operational execution.
- Partner with Branch Operations and Supply Chain teams to proactively address fulfilment gaps, persistent stock issues, or vendor performance bottlenecks.
- Participate in Branch WOR (Weekly Operational Review) meetings to align on stock planning, promotional rollouts, competitor intelligence, and seasonal preparation.
- Gather regional feedback loops to inform national planning with on-ground insights and localized execution needs.
- Conduct post-mortem promo/monthly sales reviews and provide feedback to vendors and Operation and Supply Chain for improvement.
- Coordinate with finance on pricing accuracy, vendor rebate reconciliation, and claim resolution.
- Act as escalation point to Engage with Admins or SAP support teams on system issues affecting pricing uploads, listing setups, or new store mapping to ensure smooth day-to-day operations.
5) People Leadership & Capability Development
- Lead, coach, and support the merchandising teams in Sabah and Sarawak to ensure clarity in category objectives, execution accountability, and KPI delivery.
- Review team performance regularly, provide structured feedback, and identify training or development opportunities to elevate team capability.
- Mentor team members on vendor negotiation, stock troubleshooting, promo setup, and data interpretation and ensuring team members adherence to SOPs and process guidelines for promo & pricing, NPP/New vendor account submission, Trading Term with vendors as well as any other merchandising-related matters
- Promote teamwork and alignment between Sabah and Sarawak teams, ensuring shared goals and best practices.
- Ensure that regional teams operate in alignment with corporate SOPs, category strategies, and brand positioning while adapting for local agility.
6) Performance Analytics & Strategic Reporting
- Oversee regional category sales and profitability performance, identifying trends, underperforming segments, and whitespace opportunities.
- Utilize data from SAP, Qliksense dashboards, internal reports and in-market intelligence to inform decision-making and propose commercially sound initiatives.
- Identify fast and slow movers and suggest actions (re-listing, delisting, promotion, or pack changes) accordingly.
- Support data-driven discussions with vendors and management by preparing clear visual summaries and commentaries to fast-track solutions and guide improvement plans moving forward.
7) Field-level Visibility & In-Store Execution
- Collect feedback from store visits, and operation teams to understand on-ground challenges and opportunities as well as Monitoring in-store execution of promotions, new listings, and planograms.
- Gather qualitative feedback from store and field ops teams regarding assortment gaps, promotion success, and competitor activity. Compile and consolidate feedback into insights that influence future category planning, vendor reviews, and listing decisions.
- Ensure recurring store-level issues and long-standing vendor or system-related operational issues are logged, escalated, and resolved through proper internal follow-up.
- Ensure that promotions and product changes comply with internal SOPs and are clearly communicated to branches to prevent hiccups.
- Taking ownership of resolving pricing errors, late deliveries, stock availability issues and identifying gaps in implementation and follow up with vendors, ops, or merchandising teams accordingly.
- Proactively suggest improvements to execution processes for better speed, visibility & consistency with the ops & field team.
8) SOP Compliance & Administration
- Ensure full compliance to internal processes related to vendor account creation, product listing, pricing uploads, and promotional timelines.
- Review and verify all documentation submitted by team for accuracy and completeness.
- Guide team in submitting SAP-related setups, flagging any missing fields or errors before escalation.
- Ensure timely closure of listing or promo rebate documentation so that category margins would not be impacted.
- Review and validate all documentation before submission to HQ, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and adherence to internal standards
Requirements:
- Minimum 5 years of experience in retail category management, merchandising, or related roles within the FMCG industry, with proven success in driving category growth and profitability.
- Prior experience managing direct reports, including coaching and performance development, with strong leadership presence across regional teams.
- Demonstrated experience working across East Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak), with deep understanding of local market dynamics, customer preferences, and operational challenges.
- Proven track record in vendor negotiation, assortment planning, promotional execution, and cross-functional coordination within a fast-paced retail environment.
- Experienced in leveraging retail analytics and tools (e.g., SAP) to track sales, margin, inventory, and generate actionable insights for category decisions and promotional planning.
- Team Leadership & Coaching Ability to lead, coach, and develop regional category teams by providing clear direction, mentoring support, and structured performance feedback to drive execution excellence.
- Issue Resolution & Operational Agility Strong hands-on capability to resolve vendor performance gaps, store-level discrepancies, and cross-functional issues with speed and precision, while maintaining a focus on continuous improvement.
- Data-Driven Decision Making Proficient in Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and data analysis tools to extract insights, identify risks, and support high-impact category decisions
- Vendor Management & Negotiation Experienced in managing supplier partnerships including negotiation of trading terms, fulfillment performance, and commercial collaboration while holding vendors accountable to deliverables.
- Strategic Execution & Planning Results-oriented with a structured approach to planning, execution, and follow-through, ensuring timely product launches, promo execution, and operational readiness.
- Regional Market Adaptation Skilled at localizing national category strategies for East Malaysia by aligning plans with regional consumer trends, operational dynamics, and store-level realities in Sabah and Sarawak.
- Commercial Acumen Strong understanding of sales drivers, margin levers, and product economics; able to optimize assortment mix for both growth and profitability.
- Execution Under Pressure
- Process Compliance & Documentation Accuracy
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- SAP & Retail System Familiarity
