For over six decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. The Group, in its endeavour to excel as a hybrid retailer, has reinforced its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of eight owned brands and over 300 international brands in the luxury, beauty, fashion, and art de vivre categories. More recently, the Group expanded its expertise into new categories of luxury watches, jewellery, and eyewear.

Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken with the customer at heart. Be it constantly reinventing itself or focusing on innovation to provide luxury experiences at over 750+ experiential retail stores, online and through mobile apps, each touch point leads to delighting the customer.

Today, Chalhoub Group stands for 14,000 skilled and talented professionals across seven countries, whose cohesive efforts have resulted in the Group being ranked third in the Middle East and first in Saudi Arabia as a Great Place to Work®.

To keep the innovation journey going, the Group has set up "The Greenhouse", which is not just an innovation hub, but also an incubator space and accelerator for start-ups and small businesses in the region and internationally. This is just one of the several initiatives taken by the Group to reinvent itself, catalysed by forward thinking and future-proofing. The Group has also been embedding sustainability at the core of its business strategy with a clear commitment towards people, partners and the planet, and by being a member of the United Nations Global Compact Community and signatory of the Women's Empowerment Principles.

What you'll be doing

Our Category Manager based in the UAE would look after Faces regionally and is responsible for defining and driving the "offer" and purchasing strategy for different product categories and brands. The Category Manager is also responsible for defining the action plan for the categories, merchandising, promotional activities, prices, and negotiations.

Responsibilities:

- Develop the business plan of the category in line with the strategic objectives of Faces.
- Formulate and communicate the category performance objectives and continuously monitor progress and alignment toward strategic objectives.
- Negotiate annual commercial agreements and the commercialization of advertising spaces with the brands.
- Takes ownership of gross margins & drives an optimal category mix to influence growth.
- Benchmark current performance vs. the competition and the peer market
- Create different tools to improve the categories' performance
- Handle the production of the annual calendar for the brands promotions, launches, etc.
- Assess the requirements and coordinate with relevant internal/external stakeholders (Marketing, Visual Merchandising, Suppliers, Category Managers and Logistics)
- Negotiate with suppliers for the stock returns (discontinued and slow movers)
- Analyses and helps interpret trends pertaining to the market, competitors, customers & partners, and uses.
- Assists in building a competitive assortment, keeping in mind market and competition trends
- Focus on core categories and new categories/ brands to work on a holistic assortment.
- Works closely with internal functions like a supply chain for inventory management & managing the buying budget, marketing for the promotional calendar, sales operations for driving key initiatives/novelties and e-commerce team in ensuring that the assortment is in line with offline to drive omnichannel retailing.
- Drives team to maximize additional income for the organization through initiatives like space selling (animation)
- Ensures that the commercial teams drive new launches, new categories or new brands/ initiatives successfully.
- Addresses commercial escalations both internal and external.
- Assortment and Lifecycle Management (depending on defined KPIs)
- Store Profitability
- Listing and De-Listing decisions
- Development, Sourcing, and Implementation of new Assortment Concepts, Trends, and Brands.
- Competitive Benchmarking
- Supplier Management & Negotiations
- Purchasing Meetings and first-order responsibilities
- Limit (OTB) and Inventory (shared responsibility w/ supply chain)
- COOP, JBP Negotiation
- Build and negotiate an activation plan for the Category
- Intersection cross-department to Marketing, E-Com, Finance, Logistics, Retail Teams
- Ongoing feedback and exchange with the Retail Team