Assistant Category Manager

Faithful to Nature is a market leader in the online natural product retail space with the mission of improving the health of our customers and our planet. We’re home to analysts, creatives, activists, and innovators. We believe in doing things differently and are busy pioneering the natural health wellness industry. From our humble beginnings, we’ve grown to service thousands of loyal customers across South Africa, we’re now a late-stage startup looking to scale our business and stamp our mark on South Africa’s retail sector

We are looking for an **Assistant Category Manager** who will be responsible for handling admin related tasks and providing a support function for the category managers so that the overall targets of the department can be achieved namely category growth and margin targets.

**The tasks are listed but not limited to the below**:
**New product and vendor sourcing**
- Making contact with identified vendors to request their product and pricing lists, barcodes and other information as requested by the category managers.
- Populate the respective sheets with the new product details and pricing as received from the supplier
- Manage and the general admin on the go live tab, by ensuring the payment terms are signed, returned and filed, barcodes are received and added to the sheet.

**Sourcing of promotional offers**
- Making contact with suppliers to source category promotions in line with the marketing calendar and the overall category targets.
- Add promotions as agreed in supplier meetings to the promotions sheet.

**Pricing administration**
- Handle all pricing tasks in Acumatica.
- Manage all pricing uploads into Acumatica while ensuring alignment to margin targets/
- Send price increase templates to suppliers and communicate the date of price increases to the category managers as well as to the planning team.
- Ensure that all price increases are saved in the corresponding folders for reference
- Ensure that margin for the category is maintained at all times.

**Supplier Relationships**
- Nurture supplier relationships at every touchpoint through professional and kind communication.
- Attend supplier meetings, as requested by category managers, take notes and handle next steps like sending pricing sheets, logging of promotions etc.

**Ad hoc Tasks**
- Being open and flexible to integrate ad hoc requests from the category managers into the daily/weekly/monthly workflow.

**KPIs**:

- Timeous sourcing of specials and ensuring that the category manager and marketing team is in the loop should the finalising of a special is not be running on time.
- Kind and professional communication with all stakeholders.
- Timeous and accurate handling of price updates as well as pricing tasks.
- Timeous responses across all communication channels and stakeholders.
- Proactive thinking across all areas of responsibility within this role.

**Experience and Skills**:

- Relevant degree or experience in category management, buying or planning
- Ecommerce and/or retail experience
- Experience with handling supplier relationships
- Negotiation experience
- Solid understanding of margin
- Knowledge of natural & organic products beneficial
- Strong track record of being able to work independently and within a team environment

**General Requirements in the role**:

- **Accountability**:Showing ownership and responsibility for your performance, actions, and outcomes.
- **Collaboration**: Building relationships with colleagues, customers, and suppliers, and contributing to effective team performance.
- **Initiative**:Showing curiosity, spotting gaps, finding new and better ways to do things
- **Adaptability**: Understanding changes in tasks, projects in a fast paced environment.
- **Communication**: Effectively exchanging information with team members, customers and suppliers.
- **Attendance**:Being present during working hours.