Position Responsibilities
1. Category Strategy & Product Selection
- Develop long-term merchandise and FMCG category strategy.
- Identify market trends, customer needs, and whitespace opportunities.
- Build annual merchandising roadmap.
- Curate product assortment balancing commercial potential, brand fit and customer demand.
- Conduct competitive benchmarking and pricing analysis.
- Manage product lifecycle from launch to discontinuation.
2. Go-To-Market (GTM)
- Lead end-to-end product launches.
- Coordinate cross-functional execution with Marketing, Operations, Supply Chain, Procurement and Retail teams.
- Develop launch calendars and commercialization plans.
- Ensure stores are fully launch-ready.
- Monitor launch performance and optimize quickly after launch.
3. Commercial Performance Management
Own merchandise business performance including:
- Sales
- Revenue
- Gross Margin
- Sell-through Rate
- Average Basket Size
- Attachment Rate
- Product Mix
- Category Contribution
Responsibilities include:
- Weekly business review
- Performance reporting
- Promotion effectiveness analysis
- Pricing optimization
- Portfolio review
- Growth planning
4. Inventory & Demand Planning
- Forecast demand for new and existing products.
- Partner with Supply Chain to maintain healthy inventory levels.
- Optimize stock allocation across outlets.
- Reduce stock-outs and overstock.
- Improve inventory turnover.
- Manage product replenishment planning.
- Monitor product expiry where applicable.
5. Retail Merchandising & Customer Experience
- Develop merchandising guidelines.
- Optimize in-store product placement.
- Design retail display concepts.
- Improve visual merchandising.
- Increase product visibility.
- Work with Operations to ensure execution consistency.
- Continuously improve customer shopping experience inside stores.
6. Supplier & Product Management
- Source new suppliers and products.
- Negotiate commercial terms.
- Monitor supplier performance.
- Ensure product quality standards.
- Collaborate on exclusive merchandise development.
- Identify innovation opportunities.
7. Cross-functional Leadership
Partner closely with:
- Marketing
- Operations
- Supply Chain
- Procurement
- Finance
- Product Development
- Store Operations
to ensure successful execution across the retail business.
8.Business Growth & Continuous Improvement
- Identify new retail growth opportunities.
- Develop seasonal campaigns.
- Recommend assortment expansion.
- Explore licensing and collaboration opportunities.
- Drive process improvements.
- Build scalable merchandising processes as the business grows.
Qualifications and Experience
- Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Retail Management, Supply Chain or related field
- 5–8 years of experience in Merchandising, Category Management, Buying, Retail Commercial, or FMCG.
- Managed 500–1,000+ SKUs
- Owned a category with P&L accountability
- Experience managing end-to-end product lifecycle.
- Experience in retail or FMCG industry preferred.
- Experience with merchandise planning or inventory management.
- Experience launching new product categories is highly desirable.
Preferred industries:
- Retail
- FMCG
- Convenience Store
- Lifestyle Retail
- Consumer Goods
- Coffee Chain
- Modern Trade
- E-commerce
- Category Management
Technical Skills
- Merchandising Strategy
- Product Selection
- Demand Forecasting
- Inventory Planning
- Commercial Analysis
- Retail Analytics
- Financial Modelling
- Pricing Strategy
- Supplier Management
- Excel / Google Sheets
- Commercial mindset
Leadership Competencies
- Strong analytical thinking
- Customer obsession
- Excellent stakeholder management
- Strong project management
- Structured problem solving
- Data-driven decision making
- High ownership
- Bias for action
- Detail-oriented with strong execution capability
a Necessity, not a Luxury
