Regional Merchandising Supervisor

**Western Cape**
**,**
**Cape Town**

**(Market related)**

**Southern Oil Pty Ltd, an established company and market leader in manufacturing Canola oil and related products in the retail, food services, and bulk sectors, has the following exciting career opportunity in the Coastal Region.**

**Short Summary**:
The primary responsibility of this position is to supervise and drive merchandising and distribution in the formal wholesale and retail regions. The position supervises internal Field Marketers, Merchandisers and Merchandising Agents to ensure distribution, shelf space targets, and scorecards are met. The Regional Merchandising Supervisor will work closely with the Key Accounts Managers to achieve sales goals and targets.

**Responsibilities**:

- **Merchandising and Distribution Scorecard Creation and Implementation**:

- Create an annual strategy with set objectives quarterly to achieve 95% distribution across formal retail and wholesale regions.
- Create a quarterly scorecard for designated regions which becomes the blueprint that is used to manage Field Marketers and Merchandising Agencies.
- Identify problem areas, opportunities, and quickly and effectively resolve issues. Set daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly objectives for the Merchandising Agency and manage them to achieve the objectives.
- Review monthly scorecard and identify or rectify if necessary.
- Weekly set meetings with channel managers, feedback sessions and brief in new tasks.
- **Merchandising Team Supervision**:

- Daily and weekly meetings with the Merchandising Team and Merchandising Agency.
- Manage Field Marketers with a weekly call cycle to set tasks and objectives.
- Review call cycle to ensure it is optimized and efficient.
- Give monthly feedback to the Marketing Manager and Commercial Manager on performance.
- Monthly merchandising feedback presentation on what was achieved and the objectives.
- Weekly meeting with replenishers in distribution centres.
- Weekly feedback on objectives to National Merchandising Supervisor.
- **Overall Merchandising**:

- Merchandising of company’s stock on the store shelves.
- Identify if listed products are in the arranged stores.
- Products to have correct Price Indicators.
- Ensure sufficient stock is on the shelf or request stock from the storeroom.
- Review stock reports from retailers to identify problems or solutions.
- Review distribution centres stock holding and inform the Key Account Managers for orders.
- Ensure that the stock in stores is packed according to the agreed internal planogram.
- Ensure that stock sits at the front of the shelf with labels correctly aligned.
- Install point of sale items where relevant.
- Manage agency to use POS correctly and distribute correctly.
- Ensure before and after photos are taken to track results.
- Actively use REPLSY to track visits and to monitor Field Marketer performance.
- **Insure Free Standing Units (FSU), Gondola Ends and Cross Merchandising**:

- Setup FSU and Gondola end as per the agreement with the customer and the company.
- Implement Cross Merchandising Strategy as negotiated by the Field Marketer.
- **Market Intelligence**:

- Monthly Price Survey required.
- Competitor tracking, new products entering the market, price shifts in the market.
- Identify key stores with potential and build the stores further.
- Identify threats or areas of loss of sales and escalate to the Marketing Manager.
- Analyze insights and retailer data sheets as received to gain insight.
- Monthly distribution and merchandising report to be presented to Marketing Manager.
- **Quality Control**:

- Any quality-related issues are escalated to the Quality Control Manager or Marketing Manager.
- Identify packaging issues.
- Escalate complaints from the trade.
- Manage agents to report issues.
- Manage returns in all the distribution centres.
- **Merchandising Agent Management**:

- Set Quarterly Scorecards for the Merchandising Agent.
- Break down into weekly and monthly tasks and objectives for Merchandising agents.
- Track progress carefully for the Merchandising Agent.
- Receive feedback reports from Merchandising Agent and compile into a monthly marketing report.
- Communicate with channel managers and regional managers every week.
- Communicate updates on progress weekly with the Marketing Manager.
- Build relationships with agency managers to improve relationships.
- Set Quarterly review with Merchandising Agency for formal scorecard review.
- Organize regional retail audits quarterly and compile detailed feedback.
- Ensure monthly commission payment to Merchandising Agent is correct.
- Set up meetings between Merchandising Agent and Marketing Manager for quarterly reviews.
- **Wet Demo Activations**:

- Manage in-store activations for the wholesale and retail region.
- Set targets and conduct training.
- Confirm all arrangements regarding activations.
- Ensure activators are branded.
- **Marketing Events**:

- Merchandising Team to be involv