Job Description
The Vice President, Front Room Merchandising provides enterprise leadership for category strategy, portfolio performance, and merchandising execution across assigned businesses. This leader translates the company strategy into an integrated category agenda that strengthens customer relevance, supplier value, and profitable growth across DIY, Professional, and eCommerce channels. The role owns the performance of a broad category portfolio and establishes the operating mechanisms, talent, and cross-functional alignment required to deliver sales, gross margin, inventory productivity, working capital, cash flow, and return on invested capital objectives.
As a senior merchandising executive, the Vice President leads a team of category leaders, serves as a key advisor to executive leadership, and builds strategic partnerships across Merchandising, Supply Chain, Finance, Marketing, Inventory, Store Operations, eCommerce, and the supplier community. The role sets clear priorities, makes enterprise tradeoffs, and ensures category plans translate into consistent execution and measurable business outcomes.
Key Responsibilities
Enterprise Category Strategy and Portfolio Leadership
- Establishes the vision, strategic direction, and multi-year roadmap for a broad portfolio of categories, aligned with the company strategy and customer value proposition.
- Identifies emerging categories, portfolio opportunities, and category role shifts based on industry, competitor, customer, and consumer trends.
- Integrates category strategies across assortment, branding, innovation, pricing, promotion, space, marketing, digital, and supply chain to maximize enterprise value.
- Allocates resources and investment across categories based on strategic importance, growth potential, customer needs, and financial return.
- Creates operating rhythms that improve category planning, decision quality, accountability, and execution across the organization and supplier community.
Financial and Commercial Leadership
- Owns portfolio-level business performance, including sales, gross margin, gross margin rate, inventory productivity, working capital, cash flow, and return on invested capital.
- Provides executive leadership in the development of strategic financial plans, annual operating plans, budgets, forecasts, and performance commitments.
- Establishes portfolio-level financial guardrails, risk tolerance, and investment criteria for pricing, promotion, assortment, inventory, and vendor programs.
- Uses customer, market, competitive, and financial insights to identify performance gaps, prioritize value-creation opportunities, and accelerate corrective action.
- Leads complex business decisions and enterprise tradeoffs that balance near-term performance with sustainable long-term growth.
Supplier Strategy and Negotiation
- Defines supplier strategy across the portfolio, including segmentation, joint business planning, innovation, sourcing, performance expectations, and risk management.
- Serves as executive sponsor for strategic supplier relationships and creates partnerships that improve customer value, differentiation, profitability, and supply continuity.
- Establishes negotiation strategies and enterprise positions for high-value, complex, or top-tier supplier negotiations.
- Aligns sourcing objectives and supplier investments to category strategy, company priorities, and available resources.
- Monitors macroeconomic conditions, cost drivers, regulatory changes, and supply-base dynamics to anticipate risk and protect business performance.
Enterprise Leadership and Execution
- Translates corporate vision into clear merchandising and category priorities, operating plans, and measurable outcomes.
- Leads enterprise-wide initiatives requiring alignment across Merchandising, Supply Chain, Finance, Marketing, Inventory, Store Operations, and eCommerce.
- Influences executive and senior leaders to resolve competing priorities, remove barriers, and accelerate execution.
- Creates clear governance, decision rights, and accountability for strategic category initiatives and cross-functional work.
- Communicates the strategy and business rationale with clarity to internal and external audiences, ensuring consistent understanding and execution.
Talent and Organizational Leadership
- Builds and leads a high-performing organization of category leaders and teams, with clear expectations for strategy, commercial judgment, collaboration, and results.
- Develops succession plans and a strong leadership pipeline through coaching, differentiated development, talent movement, and meaningful career opportunities.
- Sets the standard for inclusive leadership, constructive challenge, disciplined decision-making, and enterprise collaboration.
- Designs organizational capabilities, roles, processes, and ways of working needed to deliver the category strategy.
- Creates an environment where teams use data, customer insight, and financial acumen to make timely, high-quality decisions.
Qualifications
- 15+ years of progressive experience in category management, merchandising, strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, or a related commercial discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 7-10+ years of significant people leadership experience, including leading leaders and building high-performing teams.
- Demonstrated ownership of a large, complex category portfolio and delivery of measurable outcomes across sales, margin, inventory, working capital, cash flow, and/or return on invested capital.
- Proven success shaping enterprise strategy, leading transformation, and influencing executive stakeholders across multiple functions.
- Extensive experience leading complex supplier relationships and high-value negotiations.
- Exceptional financial acumen, analytical judgment, strategic thinking, communication, and executive presence.
- Undergraduate degree in Business Administration or a related field preferred; advanced degree is a plus.
Leadership Expectations:
- Thinks enterprise-first and makes decisions that optimize total company value.
- Sets a compelling direction and converts strategy into disciplined execution.
- Builds trust, aligns stakeholders, and communicates with clarity and consistency.
- Develops leaders, strengthens organizational capability, and holds teams accountable for results.
- Balances customer needs, commercial outcomes, operational realities, and long-term growth.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class. We comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws.
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