Associate Manager, Brand Partnerships

Role Overview

• Be the expert in your category: What does the market look like outside of GOVX? What brands are trending, what does price look like in the market? How can GovX differentiate our offering from the market?
• Upsell current vendors across product lines: Marketing Services, GOVX Marketplace (Affiliate), Marketing Services and GOVX Shop (wholesale – dropship and wholesale
• inventory).
• Manage vendor relationships to achieve all financial goals (orders, revenue and margin).
• Drive member value by leverage partner relationships (Shop, Marketplace, GOVXID) to offer the best pricing to our deserving audience.
• Review and analyze vendor and product performance to make data driven decisions to optimize the business, pricing and the catalog offering.
• Execute defined business plans, including strong and detailed promotional programs. Maximize gross margin dollars and improve profitability of programs following direction of Senior Management.
• Budget and forecast each category annually.
• Partner with procurement to drive all business level decisions pertaining to partners in our warehouse:
• Own assortments that will be held in The GOVX Fulfillment Center.
• Drive marketing plans to ensure that we are moving through inventory and growing the brands that are held in our GOVX Fulfillment Center.
• Review aged inventory monthly and price accordingly to make sure we do not sit on stale inventory and churn our inventory every 60 days on average.
• Maintain forecasts for all brands with product in the GOVX Fulfillment Center for cash planning.
• Stay on the pulse of inventory availability and partner with procurement to ensure we maintain the best stocking position for product offering in Inventory Product. This includes reviewing demand plans in detail, keeping assortment up to date, and working with brands to optimize the offering.
• Understand the category in market and identify holes in the GOVX assortment. Work with Account Executive team to identify new brand opportunities to meet our members’ needs that drive top line and margin growth
• Partner with the Account Executive team to support new brand launches as key growth opportunities for the category.
• Build and maintain relationships with new partners (Shop, Marketplace, GOVXID) to optimize growth on GOVX.
• Negotiate all aspects of brand margin to make sure GOVX hits our margin targets and getting the best possible pricing for our members from the brands.
• Develop and manage a pricing and margin strategy across categories and brands.
• Work with all vendors to ensure GOVX SLAs are being achieved including but not limited to: order processing times, returns processes, inventory and cancellations.
• Work with vendors to ensure that GOVX has the best possible product assortment: access to new product at launch, access to close-out product at preferred pricing, GWPs and wholesale discounts.
• Manage new brands on GOVX through a launch plan to ensure success. Be the advocate and ensure an innovative and successful launch strategy.
• Maintain and renegotiate contracts with existing Shop partners to ensure ideal terms for items including but not limited to: wholesale cost, shipping methods, payment terms, and customer returns.
• Own the merchandising of your category:
• Leverage website performance reporting and understand the levers that drive conversion rates of products, pages and brands to make sure we are getting the right products in front of the right customers within your category.
• Partner with the Analyst to ensure you have the reporting you need to understand performance and what drives engagement and conversion within the most important collections online.
• Set the strategy around the product set up for your categories including but not limited to:
• Product tags
• Minimum attributes
• Images and descriptions on product pages
• Regularly review taxonomy to make sure we have the right categories to support engagement.
• Regularly review top search terms to ensure members are finding appropriate products to drive a conversion in top searches for your category.
• Partner with Marketing to ensure we are delivering the best promotions to our audience based on performance data (sales, conversion rates, search data, etc.).
• Identify promotional opportunities
• leverage supplier relationships to negotiate promotional programs that drive sales and profits and deliver value to the GovX customer.
• Work cross-functionally with internal teams (including but not limited to: Inventory, Finance, Marketing, Digital Merchandising, Customer Care) to support the category goals.
• Meet or exceed all marketing deadlines and provide clear direction for marketing using sales data and inventory availability.
• Complete business recaps to be shared with senior management quarterly.
• Identify and shop retail and web based competition.
• Guide Digital Merchants to optimize product placement, updates and promotions.
• Guide Digital Merchants to optimize discoverability, filtering and categories based on industry knowledge and drive discoverability of your brands / categories. This includes but is not limited to booking placements for product and content modules to drive traffic to key partners on landing pages.
• Excellent communication skills both verbal and written.
• Ability to deal with ambiguity and make decisions based on what is materially most impactful to GOVX.

Requirements

• 4 years’ Merchandising/Buying/Category Management experience.
• 2 years’ experience in a vendor / partner ownership role.
• Solution and results oriented.
• Passionate and mission driven.
• Strong relationship building and partnership skills.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Superior analytical, negotiation and math skills
• Exceptional technical skills: proficiency in Microsoft Excel.
• Experience with Google Analytics or a similar web analytics platform.
• Strong negotiation skills.
• Proven ability to juggle multiple tasks and prioritize based on materiality to drive growth.

Benefits

• Flexible Time Off, Paid Sick Leave, Paid Holidays
• 401(k) plan with discretionary match available
• Medical, Dental, Vision, and Life Insurance
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA), Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Voluntary benefits including Critical Illness, Group Accident, and Voluntary Life
• Employee Referral Program
• Gym on site
• Discounts on the GOVX website