Director of Merchandise - Hardlines

As a family company, we serve people and communities. When you work at Meijer, you’re provided with career and community opportunities centered around leadership, personal growth and development. Consider joining our family – take care of your career and your community!

Meijer Rewards

• Weekly pay

• Scheduling flexibility

• Paid parental leave 

• Paid education assistance

• Team member discount

• Development programs for advancement and career growth

Please review the job profile below and apply today!

This role is the Director of Merchandise for the following categories: Garden, Sporting Goods, Auto, DIY

What You'll be Doing:

Strategic Responsibilities:

• Drive the strategic direction of the area with the goal to make Meijer the most compelling place for our customers to shop by focusing on pricing, assortment, brands, marketing and store presentation including product development and trend.
• Collaborate with Planning Managers on plans and forecasting.
• Visit stores (both Meijer and competition) and markets regularly to proactively understand assortments, pricing, store presentation and industry trends.

Annual Category Planning:

• Work with the team on the financial plan.
• Responsible for the overall direction and performance of a merchandising category.
• Approve the category position profile and role.
• Engage in the business analytics, and provide feedback and strategic direction during category review.

Space Planning:

• Set the strategy for space allocation and challenge team to optimize space.

Pricing:

• Provide leadership in Meijer’s pricing integrity with the paramount goal of being competitive, and also maximizing sales and direct margin dollars, always putting the customer first.
• Review pricing analytics with team lead the process of determining optimal pricing.
• Lead the marketing allocation process for their area.
• Evaluate marketing effectiveness (lift over norm in sales and direct margin dollars) and lead changes to drive increases over prior year.

Markdowns:

• Approve Planning Manager’s recommended markdown strategy that ties to plan.
• Inform and elevates markdowns that do not tie to plan to VP and (or) GVP.
• Participate in vendor negotiation for markdown support or returns.

 
Analytics:

• Responsible for strong action-oriented analysis of business in season, post season and long-term planning of category.
• Use analysis to drive assortment, marketing, pricing and store placement decisions.
• Utilize industry information to drive brand and item selection focusing on competing with both mass, big box and specialty retail.
• Drive the grow, maintain, downtrend category designations to create bottoms up plan to meet total area financial targets.

People Development and Training:

• Supervise, train and develop the Merchandise Buyer and Associate Buyer, provide coaching to Buyer on the management of the Merchandise Associate with the goal to develop team members to be promoted.
• Evaluate team, and determine developmental opportunities for team, and is responsible for continuous improvement of team performance.
• This job profile is not meant to be all inclusive of the responsibilities of this position; may perform other duties as assigned or required.

What You Bring with You (Qualifications):

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent retail experience.
• 10+ years of experience in retail industry including buying/inventory with increasing responsibility.
• Management experience.
• In depth knowledge of the market, business and customer.
• Superior negotiation, analytical, assortment building skills.
• Demonstrate strong strategic thinking and tactical disciplines.
• Strong communication skills.
• Ability to prioritize what’s most important to drive results.
• Demonstrated expertise of business drivers (pricing, promotion, and assortment).
• Demonstrated leadership, motivation, inspiration and ability to challenge / inspire team.
• Ability to manage team members to business goals.
• Results focused; use performance targets and goals to drive own activities as well as lead team success.