The Director of Brand & Product Management is responsible for executing the brand strategy, business performance and P&L for the subsegment of Craftsman Tools that they manage. The Director will lead his/her product areas to: 1) Identify and Create short and long-term strategies to win in the marketplace; 2) drive product and marketing innovation to improve return on investment; and 3) identify and devlop initiatives for profitable business growth.
The Director of Brand & Product Management must demonstrate strong leadership, strategy and analytical skills and be able to work seamlessly with Sears merchants and vendors to develop and create a sustainable winning line-up of tools to excel in meeting customer needs and desired benefits.
JOB RESPONSIBILITIES
P&L – Manage financials related to Craftsman subsegment you are responsible for.
Brand Strategy – Create a short and long term approach to leverage the Craftsman strategy to win with product news building off of Craftsman’s heritage and equity among target customers.
Brand Positioning – Identify and constantly improve the positioning and relationship that Craftsman has with target customers.
Customer Insights – Develop superior knowledge of target customers insights to drive for improved product performance and marketing reach to maximize customer shopping experience.
Promotion Strategy – Identify most impactful retail promotion activity to support product and create metrics to measure for continual improvement.
Marketplace Insights – Develop superior knowledge in how competition launches products and promotes their brands in order to execute proactive marketing and product initiatives. Understand impact of emerging technology and trends on product development.
Product design – understand and apply ergonomic and ethnographic learnings to optimize product design for in-use experience.
Product innovation – understand where optimum innovation opportunities exist in key performance and new-to the world benefits in order to be superior in product innovation in the marketplace.
Product performance – Maintain real time understanding of competitive performance to insure Craftsman maintains the Craftsman Advantage with customers.
Product assortment/SKU management – Constantly challenge step up approach to insure Craftsman has all the products required to meet customer needs but not more product than what will most efficiently use floor space.
Cost/pricing – Identify best solutions to manage cost and recommend an MSRP that will best drive customer sales and retailer profitability.
Channel Merchandising Mix – Understand optimum assortment by customer channel and product segment.
Vendor management – Act as lead contact with vendor to drive exclusive product development and subsidy support. Support Design, Supply and Manufacturing organization to constantly drive out cost while delivering customer performance requirements.
Sears interface – Insure that each level of merchant team is well versed in customer and product requirements to grow Craftsman sales at Sears and that Sears supports products and marketing initiatives under development.
Product Launch – insure seamless launch of new products into brand assortment
Communication– Provide constant communication and updates to peers, merchant team, management and vendors so that all teams are operating off of same information.
Leadership – Act and be seen as leader of your area of the business.
Training and Development – Focus on training and developing direct reports to create the highest performing work team. Be decisive with under-performers and reward strong results.
Knowledge, Skills And Abilities Required To Perform Essential Functions
Education/Training
• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field; MBA preferred
Experience
• 10+ years of experience in product development. Merchandising and/or marketing experience is a plus but not mandatory.
• History of strong sales and margin performance
• Served in leadership position developing strong direct reports and successfully leading cross-functional teams
• Proven experience in brand turnaround situations
• Experience working in a matrix organization a plus
Role specific abilities/skills
• Entrepreneurial approach to the business – oriented towards growth versus optimizing current business.
• Results orientation – effectively manages a P&L to meet or exceed planned results.
• Creative – thinks in new an innovative ways about the business.
• Strong interpersonal skills – ability to interact effectively with all levels in the organization.
• Superior analytical skills – can translate data and financial informaiton into insights and quantitatively evaluate business performance.
• Leadership – demonstrates strong, positive leadership presence within own team and across functions
• Strategic Visioning – Proven skill at defining short and long term vision and brand strategy that wins in the marketplace
• Successful -- Demonstrated success defining and launching product and marketing initiatives that generated desired results
• Excellent communication skills – written and oral.
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