Category Manager

Sazerac Company Overview

Build your career at Sazerac! With almost 400 years of rich history, Sazerac Company has thrived as an independent, American family-owned company with operations in the United States and around the world. Since the 2000s, Sazerac has averaged double digit growth every year! Sazerac Company produces and markets the most award-winning bourbons and whiskeys in the world, including Buffalo Trace, Pappy Van Winkle, Eagle Rare, Blanton’s, and Sazerac Rye. Additionally, Sazerac owns many popular brands across a range of spirits, including Fireball, Southern Comfort, Seagram’s V.O., Myers’s, Goldschläger, Parrot Bay, 99 Brand, and Platinum Vodka. 

We’re proud of our award-winning culture and distilleries. Our Louisville office has been named one of the “Best Places to Work in Kentucky” four times, and our Buffalo Trace Distillery has earned the title of “world’s most award-winning distillery” through the dedication of our craftsmen for well over 200 years. Whether you’re a recent graduate or an experienced professional, Sazerac provides extraordinary opportunities for growth with competitive salaries and benefits in an exciting, entrepreneurial industry.

Job Description/Responsibilities

The Category Manager directly works with the Sales team in developing consumer and customer focused strategies, tactics, and category grounded solutions. This individual will conduct high quality analysis and synthesize multiple data sources to generate insights and actionable recommendations, while leveraging effective communication & influencing skills to orchestrate action within the Military, Drug & Mass team. The candidate must possess sound business judgment, excellent communication skills and demonstrate experience in the following areas: assortment planning, negotiation, creative selling and building productive relationships.

• Contribute to Sazerac fiscal year growth by establishing himself/herself as a business partner, translating insights and analytics into top and bottom line business impact. This person leads identification and communication of customer insights, driving insights from the data into actionable solutions regarding product, pricing, distribution, placement, and promotion.  Also, analyzes sales and competitive trends, identifies growth opportunities, and provides data and insights to fuel fact-based selling materials, Corporate Initiatives, NBD, and Category Reviews.
• Leads national account sales support with tools, customer insights, and compelling consumer and trade rationales to support fact-based presentations based on sales, velocities, pricing, distribution, product, and promotion analysis. Analyze effectiveness and efficiency of sales price promotion activity and frequency
• Aligns individual priorities, time, and resource allocation, by brand, country, and state priorities. Support sales team with market analysis, opportunity identification, and tracks progress. Develop compelling presentations to help secure customer & distributor support.
• Establish well organized priorities for yourself and define roles when leading initiatives/projects. Document project workflow when establishing new, best practice project workflows to facilitate future training and scalability of the process for the team and organization.
• Development and follow action plan to gain learning experiences needed to advance career.

Salary range - $111,502 - $167,500

*Placement within the salary range is calculated based upon years of directly relatable experience for the position.

Qualifications/Requirements

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Management, Accounting, Data Analytics, or related field
• A minimum of 5-7 years of experience in consumer goods, retail, or syndicated data with a focus on category management, sales, business analytics and/or shopper insights
• Extensive experience understanding, utilizing, and employing syndicated data, customer card/POS data, and panel data to drive internal and external wins through sales and share growth (experience with data sources such as Nielsen, IRI, Numerator, Kantar, etc.)
• Ability to distill complex data into simple stories.
• Demonstrated ability to build indispensable, collaborative partnerships with retail customers and internal business partners, across functional teams
• Highly skilled in Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, Word, and PowerPoint)
• Exceptional communication skills – verbal, written & presentation
• Strong planning/organizing skills; the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously
• Working knowledge of retail merchandising and in store execution tactics
• Willingness to travel 10-25% of the time

Preferred:

• Master’s degree
• Experience in Sales and/or analytical sales support and driving face to face dialogue and initiatives with Military retailers a plus.
• Experience in Alcohol & Spirits industry highly desirable
• Additional analytical experience and competencies (e.g., Tableau, Microsoft Access, PowerBI, ProSpace, SQL, VBA, Alteryx)

Salary : $111,502 - $167,500