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The Brand Manager drives sales, margin and customer loyalty for an assigned set of Own Brand brands and categories by pairing business and merchandising expertise with brand stewardship. This role leads Own Brand Leads in partnering with Merchants on pricing, assortment, category review, product development and strategic vendor partnerships, while ensuring a consistent brand voice and customer brand promise across packaging and creative.
Supporting the Director, Own Brands, the Brand Manager collaborates with core Merchandising teams, Marketing, Digital, Sourcing, Packaging, Quality Assurance and Production to achieve category goals and ensure on-time, high-quality execution of Own Brand and marketing projects.
What You'll be Doing:
- Develops and executes brand and business plans (annual, seasonal and launch) for assigned brands and categories, aligned with corporate goals and merchant priorities and grounded in customer behavior data and competitive insights.
- Leads Own Brand Lead collaboration with Merchant Partners on core Merchandising elements for the Own Brand business, including pricing strategy, assortment, digital experience, category reviews, shopper insights and strategic vendor partnerships.
- Owns accountability for sales, margin, P&L and penetration goal performance for the assigned brands and categories, and for executing and delivering results with marketing spend.
- Directs product development priorities for assigned brands, including new items, line extensions, reformulations and label redesigns, in partnership with Merchants, Sourcing, Quality Assurance and Packaging.
- Leads the Own Brand business development roadmap planning using fact-based market, trade and trend data and shopper insights to identify opportunities and recommend actions for new products, promotions, and merchandising.
- Drives brand guidelines and principles applied across categories; creates, manages, updates and communicates brand resource materials; provides brand guidance and briefs for marketing projects within the brand of responsibility.
- Leads cross-functional teams, internal and external, in translating the brand strategy into Own Brand product development, package designs and creative; oversees and enables the approval process for brand projects to ensure consistency of brand voice and the customer brand promise.
- Leads, develops and manages project timeline processes and priorities to ensure on-time execution.
- Provides coaching, direction and leadership support to Own Brand Leads to build functional expertise and achieve category and company goals.
- Creates status reports and recommendations that keep key stakeholders and the Director, Own Brands informed of progress, issues, decisions and business results.
- 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 in Business, Marketing or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 6+ years of experience in category management, merchandising/buying, Own Brand or private label, or retail/CPG product development required.
- 3+ years of management experience, including leading people or cross-functional project teams.
- Hands-on experience with category or brand P&L, pricing, assortment, and vendor or supplier partnerships; working knowledge of margin and P&L fundamentals.
- Strong analytical skills, with the ability to turn sales, customer and market data into business recommendations; proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.
- Excellent organizational skills, including the ability to coordinate with others, set priorities and meet deadlines.
- Ability to collaborate cross-functionally and influence at all levels.
- Strong project management and multi-tasking ability.
- CPG brand building or retail Own Brand experience preferred.
- Brand or marketing experience alone does not meet the experience requirement; candidates should demonstrate direct accountability for category, merchandising or product development results.
Competencies
Drafting Notes (remove before submission)
- Duties are reordered so business and merchandising responsibilities (strategy, Merchant partnership, results, product development, category review) come before brand-guideline and creative duties. This signals that the role is a business role, not a marketing role.
- Scope is not elevated: the role still leads Own Brand Leads, reports to the Director, and keeps its management level and grade. Enterprise-level planning, brand architecture ownership, long-range strategy and managing managers remain with the Senior Own Brand Manager.
- Added duties: product development priorities and category review ownership. The current profile does not mention either, but both are in the comparison sheet and the Own Brand Lead profile.
- Qualification changes: 6+ years in category, merchandising/buying, Own Brand or product development (current profile lists none); 3+ years management (current: 5 years preferred) per the earlier comparison sheet. Please confirm both numbers.
- The final qualification line is an explicit screen for marketing-only applicants. Confirm with HR/Talent Acquisition that this language is acceptable.
- Education wording kept as 'or equivalent experience' per the current profile.
- Open question: should Brand Managers also manage Associate Own Brand Managers (Sr. OBLs)? Direct reports are listed as Own Brand Leads only, matching the current profile.
