Category Manager, Handbags

**Job Title**: Category Manager, Handbags & Accessories

**Department**:
Looking to unbox your full potential? **Find YOUR Fit** at the ALDO GROUP.

**FIND YOUR FIT**
- Recognition programs to showcase your talent
- Tools to support and help them to reach their Career Goals. (Training Offers, Scholarship Programs, LinkedIn Learning and more).
- To be part of a company that takes a stand on issues affecting people, the environment, and our partners
- Summer Fridays (because Summer is for fun)
- Purchase discount on merchandise sold in all our divisions.
- Family & Friends events with discounts on our products
- Subsidized cafeteria & daycare
- Subsidized public transportation and free parking
- On-campus gym with access to a trainer
- Flex schedules and possibility to work from home
- Sick days
- Attractive total compensation

**YOUR ROLE**

Reporting to the Vice President of Planning & Allocation for Aldo North America & responsible for:

- Owning planning & allocation strategy & execution for handbags & accessories across Canada & US.
- Lead a team of planners & allocators to ensure the planning deliverables are done and approved in a timely manner and the allocation strategy is properly executed across our store fleet.
- Owning planning tasks for the Handbag category.
- Building the relationship with Buyers for both categories & countries and with Sales & Operations in Canada & US
- Developing a product category expertise to partner closely with Buying in defining the right product blend, SKU budget per cluster, quantifying the buys, allocate & replenish timely & in the right quantity;
- Lead category specific projects to optimize assortment and drive revenue growth
- Owning inventory for the category in both countries & maximize its productivity
- Working in close collaboration with the Project Team to ensure that the team is properly supported (process mapping, training & continuous improvement, reports, IT enhancements).

Management and coaching:

- Lead a team of planner & allocators, organize their workload & help them on priority management.
- Build a very strong partnership with Buying to maximize inventory profitability & store performance
- Foster a results-driven culture & accountability on KPIs and results.
- Develop team members by developing synergies between planners & allocators, building product expertise & strong store fleet knowledge.

Process and operations driven:

- Manage all planning deliverables for the handbags category across both countries
- Understand deeply the mandate of allocation & planning to be able to challenge planners & allocators
- Identify continuous improvement opportunities & area of focus to feed the project team supporting us

Analysis:

- Pilot the category by checking on a weekly, daily basis with health checks reports to ensure that allocations for the category are done timely to the right store & in the right quantity (initial allocation, replenishment, aged inventory, store inventory ) & planning deliverables are done timely & accurately
- Ability to analyze our results with potential deep dive on some product / stores to build action plan for the category (promotion, re-balancing of units )
- Ad hoc analysis to support requests on the category performance from Buyers or NA leadership

**DO YOU HAVE THE PROFILE WE'RE LOOKING FOR?**

Communication & interpersonal skills:

- Strong work ethic and interpersonal skills, enjoys working as part of a team and can provide coaching to team members
- Ability to work cross-functional in a multi-cultural environment.
- Ability to clearly communicate with partners from different teams and at different level in the hierarchy
- Ability to formalize ideas & projects: build documents/ presentation that articulate ideas clearly & map existing & target process
- Strong analytical skillset both to build reports & analyze the results
- “Customer Service” mindset to deliver support to allocators, stores

Expertise & knowledge:

- Deep expertise in Merchandise Planning, running a category by itself, ideally for a Fashion Retailer
- Allocation processes knowledge is an asset
- Understanding of inventory management & stores is an asset
- Extensive knowledge of Excel is required.
- Ability to review and analyze large amounts of data.
- Ability to make decisions and solve problems in a timely manner.

Management:

- Prior experience of managing a small team is an asset. If no management experience, previous leadership of a category is required.
- Ability to influence decisions & partner with key players without any hierarchical relationship (cross-functional work)
- Ability to work under pressure and meet multiple deadlines in a timely manner.
- Ability to document, provide constructive feedback & listen actively

**WE'RE ON A JOURNEY TO CREATE A WORLD OF LOVE, CONFIDENCE AND BELONGING**

The ALDO Group has been on this journey for over 50 years. We believe that our passionate associates are at the heart of our success, and that