Associate Category Manager

Job Type

PetSafe Brands, formerly known as Radio Systems Corporation, is headquartered in Knoxville, TN. It has been named “The Marble City” and "Scruffy City", names we have embraced for our unique charm. We are the home of 1982 World’s Fair and we boast of 21 craft breweries around the city (click here for the Ale Trail). If you like to hike or camp, visit the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Take your pick of outdoor activities from walking, tubing, running, or biking in our Urban Wilderness. Knox County has an amazing public-school system, no state income tax, low property taxes and cost of living. We host Music and Shakespeare on the Square as well as Family Movie Nights on the Square during the summer months in downtown Knoxville.

Our Company: PetSafe Brands is the world leader in pet products through our family of brands:Pet Safe® Brand, Sport DOG® Brand, Invisible Fence® Brand, Kurgo and Premier Pet. Pet Safe® Brand makes every product from leashes and harnesses to water fountains and and litter boxes. We have an ambitious goal of touching over 21 million pets, people, and communities around the world each year. We serve a broad range of pet owners from providing the hunter the best gear for a successful hunt to accommodating the “Not-So-Crazy Cat Lady” with all the entertaining toys and effective solutions she could ever imagine. We do this by creating a culture of enthusiasm, resilience, adaptability, and teamwork every day in the office. We work hard to be our community’s employer of choice as we all live our purpose: We exist to unleash freedom for pet parents by keeping their pets happy, healthy and safe. 

The Associate Category Manager supports assigned products through the full product life cycle, go-to-market strategies, and daily management of the category.   This role contributes new product development strategies for the global product portfolio of wireless containment, inground containment, and avoidance product lines and requires a great degree of cross functional collaboration. The successful candidate will exhibit a high level of financial acumen, strong analytical aptitude, and possess excellent portfolio and pricing management skills.  Additionally, this position requires excellent communication skills along with strategic thinking to lead a diverse cross functional team. 

Responsibilities:

• Contribute to category financial targets including sales, profit, expense; including 1 and 2 new item results
• Partner with Category Manager in developing the category strategy and the new product road map to maintain competitive analysis, monitoring trends, analyzing performance of assigned products
• Contributing new product ideas
• Use deep understanding of category specific customer data, profiles, trends and retail partner parameters to help the Sales team with presentations, proposals and Line Reviews 
• Assess and awareness of competitive landscape for the category including competitive position, product offering, product gaps, direct competitors and provide quarterly competitive reports
• Assist category manager in developing a deep understanding of omnichannel go to market strategies focused on pet specialty, food/drug/mass, Amazon, and Chewy
• Support product life cycle management process including product development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline
• Lead the product development process through all phases in collaboration with market research, UX/UI, engineering, brand, content, creative services, digital marketing, sales (domestic and international)
• Inform and, in some cases, lead the creation of product line extensions, such as product variations, global packaging
• Partner with digital team to optimize Ecommerce sales including Amazon, Chewy.com, Walmart.com and others.
• Collaborate with global sales teams with product information, and customer and market insights to drive new placement and sales
• Communication of competitive landscape on a quarterly basis. Includes recommendations for product, packaging and pricing improvements
• Stay up-to-date on industry trends and best practices
• Meet with retail partners and attend industry events managing product lines; including in-depth of knowledge about product line, flow of communication of product changes and updates, ideas to drive increased sales and awareness, execution of approved ideas and sales results from them

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA preferred
• Category management, brand management, new product development, and/or merchandising experience
• Strategic problem-solving ability
• Drives for results and deadlines – must be able to maintain a robust workload with an array of projects and timelines, both short and long
• Builds and maintains strong, positive relationships within the company
• Demonstrates high level of adaptability and flexibility
• Operates with autonomy
• Travel up to 10%

Accountabilities:

• Management of product lines
  • Depth of knowledge about product line
  • Flow of communication of product changes and updates
  • Ideas to drive increased sales and awareness
  • Execution of approved ideas and sales results from them
• Communication of competitive landscape on a quarterly basis. Includes recommendations for product, packaging and pricing improvements.
• Stay up-to-date on industry trends and best practices
• Support development of category strategy through key financial and market analysis

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BENEFITS:

Working for PetSafe Brands definitely has its benefits. We offer a collaborative and creative team-oriented work environment where we encourage you to take risks to learn and grow! We offer a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, and 401K match. In addition we offer a rich wellness program which includes an onsite health clinic, workout facility and of course, we encourage you to bring your dog to work, which is our whole reason for what we do!

PetSafe Brands is dedicated to offering equal employment opportunity for all teammates and fostering a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. At PetSafe Brand, our teammates are our greatest strength. We strive to build a workforce as diverse as the customers we serve by hiring great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, life experiences, knowledge, self-expression and talent. We recruit and reward teammates based on capability and performance and together we are building a culture that welcomes all dimensions of an individual’s identity including race, color, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, educational background, national origin or ancestry, religion, veteran status, or physical ability. We embrace these differences and the unique contributions each teammate brings not just because it is the right thing to do but because it makes our company stronger. While we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace and a culture of belonging, we recognize that we still have more work to do and a lot more to learn.