Merchandising Manager – EU

Report to: Global Director of Merchandising

Location: Remote

Overview of Role: The Merchandising Manager – EU is responsible for working with the Global Director of Merchandising to build and communicate the merchandising strategy for the European market, with particular focus on specific countries. This role directly manages monitoring of market trends, analyzing data, building the product category strategy, new product ideation and development, assortment planning, and product lifecycle management. This role works closely with the Pricing and Marketing teams to drive profitable growth in the EU market and with the Global Vendor Manager to round out our in-house assortment. Ultimately, this role will partner closely with Product Development (PD), Sourcing, Ops, Marketing, Creative, and PDM and execute against a shared plan.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities:

• Regularly analyze category and product level sales data
• Develop & circulate sales dashboards on monthly and quarterly basis
• Monitor competitors to be aware of pricing, products, and promotions
• Analyze sales data and work with channels to optimize promotional activities
• Execute post quarter analysis
• Utilize sales data, search interest, marketing input and customer feedback to identify growth opportunities
• Partner with Demand Planning to understand inventory levels and work with Pricing and Marketing to markup/markdown and move inventory as needed
• Conduct thorough product rationalization
• Complete gap analysis for each category on semi-annual basis
• Develop product category strategy for assigned categories
• Build and execute merchandising strategy to meet overall business goals
• Stay on top of industry trends via competitive shopping, social media, search interest, trade shows, etc. and create visual trend boards
• Partner with Global Vendor Manager and PD team to identify, build, and execute product assortment
• Maintain product assortment plan
• Assure all new products are launched on time and portrayed in the best
• Create and maintain visual merchandising boards to communicate product assortments to cross functional partners
• Partner with Marketing to drive growth in EU market
• Regularly meet with EU channel managers to understand category and product needs
• Maintain a new product priority list based on channel needs and requests
• Assess opportunities for brand fit, assortment appropriateness, marketing feasibility, technological execution, cannibalization impacts, and incremental revenue potential
• Provide recommendations for EU marketing and site campaigns, including products or categories to feature, seasonal themes and storylines
• Prior to launch, work with channel owners to develop product launch strategy for new products across all EU channels to achieve financial targets
• Work with creative and content teams to develop names, copy, and photography that best present the product
• After launch, work with channel owners to optimize promotional activities to meet or exceed financial targets
• Adhere to Product Development and MPP (master planning) calendars, and manage deadlines and deliverables with internal and external partners

Requirements and Qualifications:

• Business Level Italian or Spanish or French and English fluency required
• Bachelor’s degree/equivalent experience required
• 5 - 7 years merchandising/buying experience, promotional product experience required
• Strategic, analytical, and creative thinker
• Acute sense of brand and customer insight
• Proven talent to envision and interpret trends
• Strong verbal/written communication and presentation skills
• Accountable and able to manage projects individually and work will as part of a team
• Team player, comfortable building effective relationships with business partners
• Goal orientated; ability to stay focused on delivering results
• Strong organizational and time management skills
• Flexibility to work in a fast paced, quickly changing environment with multiple priorities

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

NATIONAL PEN is an industry leading global promotional products company, servicing over one million customers in more than twenty countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. We market, manufacture, personalize, and sell products globally through both online and offline channels. Our headquarters are in San Diego, California, with facilities in Tennessee, Mexico, Ireland, France, Tunisia, Jamaica, Japan, China supporting more than two thousand employees. National Pen’s unique niche is the ability to personalize a promotional product to a customer’s specific needs with low minimum order requirements. National Pen is owned by Cimpress plc, a multi-billion dollar publicly traded global entity with portfolio companies specializing in mass customization. (Nasdaq: CMPR