Category Manager

at  Lotus Bakeries

Verenigd Koninkrijk
St Albans
We combine Swedish tradition with British craft and natural, quality ingredients to create our hand-baked sourdough products. From crispbreads and crackers to sourdough bites, each batch begins with our sourdough starter, fermented for 16 hours for a unique, subtle flavour. Our products have won over 40 awards, including 3 stars for our Fig & Spelt Sourdough Crackers at the 2020 Great Taste Awards.

FUNCTIEBESCHRIJVING

We are looking for a talented Category Manager who can turn our category and shopper data into actionable insight, both within our business and with our retail customers. This is a great opportunity for someone who is a couple of years’ into their career in Category Management and ready for the next step. If you think you would enjoy discovering valuable insights to unlock growth opportunities for Peter’s Yard and our retailers, this could be the role for you.
The Category Development team sits within the wider commercial function of the business and is at an exciting moment, as we have a huge opportunity and are well placed to drive the premium savoury biscuits segment in the market. Reporting in to a Head of Category, you’ll work closely with the relevant commercial manager for your customer accounts, and also cross-functionally with the brand and shopper marketing teams to help the wider business understand us and our competitors.

Key focus areas of the role itself and where you will spend the majority of your time:

• As a business expert in the continuous Nielsen/Circana, dunnhumby and Nectar 360 category data we purchase, you will provide an ongoing understanding to the wider business of what is driving both our brands and the competition.
• Making recommendations to both the business and our key retail customers on range, fixture, price and promotions to help unlock future sales growth.
• Building and maintaining strong relationships with key buyers and merchandising contacts in order for them to trust and implement your recommendations.
• Providing analysis and insight for the Commercial team to take directly to retailers.
• Sharing monthly reporting responsibilities to ensure that everyone internally understands the category and to enable the business to make strategic decisions based on data.

This role requires you to get stuck into/You will also take the lead in customer collaboration, integrating insights into business decisions, and best-in-class toolkits and reporting in an innovative, fun, office environment.

PROFIEL

Alongside living our TOP values of Team Spirit, Open Dialogue, and Passion, the most important things we’re looking for from you are:

• Experience at data analysis – not just churning the numbers but telling the story behind them too. We’d love someone who can help to coach the rest of the business to make the best possible use of our data and insights, so being self-sufficient when it comes to understanding the data will be key.
• Excellent communication skills, in particular presentation skills and story-telling.
• Ability to build and develop great relationships as a trusted expert, both internally at Peter’s Yard and with our buyers and merchandising contacts at retail customers.
• Outcome focused, results driven.
• Able to prioritise quickly in a fast moving, entrepreneurial environment.
• Happy to roll sleeves up and get stuck in – we are a small category team and business at Peter’s Yard and we need people who are happy to do everything from churning the data to developing the best way to do things to set ourselves up for future growth.

Other essential requirements for this Category Manager role:

• Previous experience of working in FMCG, ideally in Category Management or Insights either supplier or agency side.
• Experience using data providers like IRi, Kantar, Nielsen, Dunnhumby Shop and/or Nectar 360 SIP.

Key focus areas of the role itself and where you will spend the majority of your time:

• As a business expert in the continuous Nielsen/Circana, dunnhumby and Nectar 360 category data we purchase, you will provide an ongoing understanding to the wider business of what is driving both our brands and the competition.
• Making recommendations to both the business and our key retail customers on range, fixture, price and promotions to help unlock future sales growth.
• Building and maintaining strong relationships with key buyers and merchandising contacts in order for them to trust and implement your recommendations.
• Providing analysis and insight for the Commercial team to take directly to retailers.
• Sharing monthly reporting responsibilities to ensure that everyone internally understands the category and to enable the business to make strategic decisions based on data

Other essential requirements for this Category Manager role:

• Previous experience of working in FMCG, ideally in Category Management or Insights either supplier or agency side.
• Experience using data providers like IRi, Kantar, Nielsen, Dunnhumby Shop and/or Nectar 360 SIP