Category Manager (6861)

Greater Leicester Area

4/29/2025

No matter where you are in your career – or where you want to be – we’re here to create a great place to work where you can grow, perform and love what you do. At Cromwell, we’re all individuals, with unique backgrounds and personalities. But we have one thing in common: delivering exceptional service for our customers. And we do this through our purpose of Keeping Industry Working.

This role is responsible for developing and managing a product portfolio to drive sales and profitable growth - using market intelligence and industry knowledge to ensure we have the best products to service our customers. Working in partnership with our centrally managed suppliers and in collaboration with cross functional colleagues to maximise supplier commercial opportunities, ensuring the most competitive procurement costs and increasing supplier income.

What’s in it for you?

• Competitive Salary
• Company Bonus
• Competitive annual leave allowance with annual purchase scheme
• Group Personal Pension
• Company Funded Healthcare Cash Plan
• Commitment to employee development plans
• 24/7 Wellbeing and Employee Support
• Cycle to work scheme
  
  
  

Other benefits include Company Sick Pay, Company Maternity & Paternity Pay, Discount Benefits Platform and Discounted Cromwell Products.

What will you do on a normal day?

• Define & Execute Category Strategy including Exclusive Brand development
• Range Reviews
• Complete high quality range reviews addressing relevance portfolio opportunities using the situational analysis 5 lens approach.
  
  

• Drive Exclusive Brand
• Develop plans to improve sales and margin whilst creating a compelling exclusive range that creates “stickiness for our customers”
  
  

• Marketing Initiatives:
• Work with suppliers to develop and execute marketing programs geared towards profitable revenue growth, thinking digital first
• Drive product performance using digital & offline channels
  
  

• Product Life Cycle Management:
• Manage product introduction, growth, maturity, and exit including driving through excess/obsolete inventory.
  
  

• Category portfolio analysis
• Analysis and reporting of product line and category performance
  
  

• Product Costing:
• Supplier negotiations to include but not limited to marketing funding, rebates, product cost prices, payment terms, scorecards, and performance metrics.
  
  

Supplier Selection and Agreements:

• Identify the best suppliers for Cromwell’s product portfolio.
• Negotiate, document and maintaining contractual agreements between Cromwell and its Suppliers
• Line Management of direct reports
  
  
  

Key Relationships

• Product & Buying Director
• Product Business Unit Directors
• External Suppliers
• Purchasing & Inventory Teams
• Global Sourcing Team
• Merchandising & Marketing Teams (e.g., Direct Marketing; Digital Content)
• Master Data Management Team
• Sales Team
• Operations / Branch Network Teams
• Finance Teams (e.g., Accounts Payable; Performance Reporting)
• Legal & Compliance Teams
  
  
  

What are we looking for?

• Experience within a distribution environment and/or knowledge of a broad line distributor.
• Commercial astute working within a high paced reselling environment.
• Experience in delivering multi brand strategies to the product portfolio.
• Minimum 3 years’ experience in a similar role negotiating supplier commercial agreements.
• Demonstrable track record of successful commercial negotiations that have increased bottom-line profit.
• Knowledge and experience of monitoring and managing annual Cost of Goods Sold (CoGs) within specified guidelines.
• Thinks digital first
  
  
  

Qualifications

Essential Qualifications & Skills

• Category Management expertise
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent (desirable).
• Outstanding verbal and written communication.
• Strong decision making and influencing skills across different levels of colleagues and suppliers.
• Demonstrable commercial knowledge, specifically around supplier commercial agreements.
• Strong IT skills including a good understanding and usage of Microsoft Office packages.