Category Manager

Lotus Natural Foods, the healthy snacking division of Lotus Bakeries and a portfolio of 5 incredible brands; BEAR, TREK, nakd. Kiddylicious and Peter's Yard, all having their own distinct proposition and role within our business. We have great ambitions for all our brands, ensuring that as a business we deliver sustainable growth over the long-term. We believe that taste and quality are 100% of what underpins us as brand leaders within our categories, and what pulls us apart from our competitors. All of our brands started right here in the UK, as the first market for distribution, but over the years we can now be found across the globe, our ranges have got bigger, along with us as a business. To date we have achieved so much, but there is still plenty of room to grow further and that means we need more brilliant people, those that share an ambition for making a difference and want to join us in delivering the next chapter of growth. Fancy getting involved, then read on

This role requires you to get stuck into detailed data analysis, and then step back to see the big picture and deliver actionable insights. These insights and recommendations then need to be communicated clearly and concisely to both an internal audience, and our leading retail customers.

Key focus areas of the role itself and where you will spend the majority of your time:

• As a business expert in the continuous Circana, Kantar, dunnhumby and Nectar 360 category data we purchase, you will provide an ongoing understanding to the wider business of what is driving both our brands and the competition.
• Making recommendations to both the business and our key retail customers on range, fixture, price and promotions to help unlock future sales growth.
• Building and maintaining strong relationships with key buyers and merchandising contacts in order for them to trust and implement your recommendations.
• Providing analysis and insight for the Commercial team to take directly to retailers.
• Sharing monthly reporting responsibilities to ensure that everyone internally understands the category and to enable the business to make strategic decisions based on data.

Area

Key Responsibilities & Objectives

(you'll be allocated specific customers)

• Develop a position as a key independent advisor with your buyers; building and maintaining strong relationships.
• Deliver monthly updates to your accounts and proactively analyse their performance; consistently providing an insightful and challenging view on the category.
• Flag risks and opportunities with distribution/RoS to account managers, and ensure robust recommendations on future promotional strategies and ranging options, including NPD sell in.
• Input into development and evolution of our top line Category Vision that we share with our retailers.

Integrating insights into Business Decisions

• Become the go to person for insight into your allocated NBF brand and retailers; a real business expert in historic market data who stays ahead of bigger trends to make proactive recommendations that drive the business forward.
• Lead analysis and drive insight for both the marketing and commercial teams, focussing on: ranging, distribution, price and promotions, events, and the NPD and EPD pipeline.

Best in class team, toolkits and reporting

• Work with our data agencies to ensure that we maintain our data quality.
• Refresh and maintain monthly category reporting, updating them to cover NPD and any other relevant new content.
• Support the teams to make sure the report data is being used and understood by the business in the right way (e.g. through learning lunches and category inductions).

With great tasting, 100% natural ingredient brands like nakd. and plant based protein brands like TREK, this is your chance to make a real mark. We're looking for a talented Category Manager who can turn all our category and shopper data into actionable insight, both within our business and with our retailer customers. This is a great opportunity for someone who is a couple of years' into their career in Category Management and ready for the next step. If you think you would enjoy discovering valuable insights to unlock growth opportunities for both nákd, Trek and our retailers, this could be the role for you.The Category team sits within the wider commercial function of the business, and you'll work closely with the relevant commercial manager for your customer accounts, and also cross functionally with the brand and shopper marketing teams to help the wider business understand the category, our brands, and those of our competitors.

Alongside living our TOP values of Team Spirit, Open Dialogue, and Passion, the most important things we're looking for from you are:

• Experience at data analysis - not just churning the numbers but telling the story behind them too. We'd love someone who can help to train and coach the rest of the business to make the best possible use of our data and insights, so being self sufficient when it comes to understanding the data will be key.
• Excellent communication skills, in particular presentation skills and story telling. Ability to build and develop great relationships as a trusted expert, both internally at NBF and with our buyers and merchandising contacts at retail customers.
• Able to prioritise quickly in a fast moving, entrepreneurial environment.
• Happy to roll sleeves up and get stuck in - we are a small category team and business at NBF and we need people who are happy to do everything from churning the data to developing the best way to do things to set ourselves up for future growth.

Other essential requirements for this Category Manager role:

• Previous experience of working in FMCG, ideally in Category Management or Insights either supplier or agency side.
• Experience using data providers like Circana, Kantar, Nielsen, Dunnhumby Shop and/or Nectar 360 SIP.

"Each day holds new and exciting challenges that drive me to continuously improve my knowledge and skillset. It's a nice feeling knowing when you leave work, you're still hungry for more "

Grasp the opportunity to join an ambitious and driven team with a mix of talents! Being part of a fast growing, international company, you will get tons of on the job learning and acquire new insights.

In addition, you will be part of a culture where passion, team spirit and open dialogue are our main drivers.

And of course, on top of that, you can enjoy delicious branded snacks every day!

Do you want to be part of a terrific team with the ambition to create small moments of happiness every day? Meet our people, discover their unique skills and get excited to join them in a great work environment.