Sr. Associate Merchant

About the role

The Sr. Associate Merchant leverages consumer insights, market trends and new product development to build curated, customer‑driven assortments and service solutions. This role partners closely with key stakeholders to understand division strategies and financial goals based on the strategic category plan, ensuring product development delivers competitive in‑store, catalog, and online programs. The position works with suppliers to set up new items and maintain item integrity, content, and web attributes, and partners cross‑functionally to provide customer‑centric solutions, improve product mix and shopping experience, and optimize assortments and catalogs to maximize trade‑up, solutions, micro‑assortments, and identify gaps by customer vertical/segment. The incumbent maintains cross‑reference files, good/better/best assortments, and upsell/cross‑sell opportunities, and is given the opportunity to fully manage and develop strategy for a sub‑category. The role requires a thought leader who brings an independent perspective while building collaborative solutions with key stakeholders across the company, and partners with content, ecommerce, inventory management, private brand, and pricing and promotion teams. It carries decision‑making authority within the assigned scope and categories, and demands a comprehensive understanding of all current and future paths to purchase, including retail store format optimization, brick‑and‑mortar shopping experience, web dynamics, digital marketing impacts, mobile experience, contract B2B sales motion, pricing strategies,