Manager, Category Development - American Whiskey (AMW) - Location: Chicago or New York City

What makes this a great opportunity?

• Organizational impact: Be part of a newly created function and high-impact team within the organization. 
• Strategy development: Drive the creation of high-impact category strategies to be leveraged by commercial teams as they sell our portfolio in with customers and market key brands to consumers. 
• Cross-functional exposure: Opportunity to collaborate across the organization, including exposure to analytics & insights, channel marketing, brand marketing, customer solutions and commercial teams. 
• Process Improvement: Opportunity to refine and establish optimized ways of working, ensuring our teams can execute with excellence in a consistent and effective manner across channels and categories. 

Role Responsibilities

As the Manager of Category Development – American Whiskey (AMW), you will play a pivotal role in shaping Suntory Global Spirits success by providing sales and marketing teams with AMW category strategies and sell stories at the channel level. Reporting directly to the Director of Category Development, you will be responsible for working cross functionally to build a deep category understanding and communicating that understanding across the marketing and sales organizations.
 

**Location: New York or Chicago.     
 

- Develop a comprehensive AMW category strategy aligned with overall business objectives, focusing on driving revenue growth, market share expansion, and increased brand loyalty.  
- Analyze syndicated POS data, shopper data & insights, consumer data & insights, market trends, and additional relevant data to create a deep understanding of the AMW category to develop insight-based strategies and sell stories, realizing category growth opportunities.
- Proactively track market, category and competitor trends to identify opportunities in the AMW space
- Influence decision makers across the business by being the category expert for AMW
- Partner with Shopper Insights team to brief customized research studies that deliver insights required to build category understanding and create compelling sell stories  
- Partner with Brand, Commercial & Channel Marketing teams to understand strategy and goals to incorporate in to AMW sell stories  
- Partner with AMW Brand team on innovation projects
- Development of ‘sell in’ tools for commercial teams for existing portfolio and innovation, at a channel level
- Develop shelf management guidance and planogram recommendations for AMW category
- Creation of distribution and assortment guidance for the AMW category
- Partner with Customer Solutions & Strategic Account teams to share category insights and trends with key retailer partners

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business Administration, or a related field   
• 4+ years of experience in category development, category management, or associated field  
• Strong knowledge of the alcoholic beverages industry and market preferred
• Must be experienced in syndicated POS data like Nielsen/Circana
• Strong knowledge of category development/management principles and terminology
• Experience in planogram principles, creation, and assortment desirable
• Exceptional technical, analytical, problem solving, and oral/written communication skills   
• Self-starter with ability to identify, create, and lead projects  
• Comfort with Microsoft Office Suite (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint) 
• Ability to sit for prolonged period(s) of time and view computer screen

The salary range for this role, based in New York or Illinois, is $110-120K, along with an annual bonus, 401K match, profit sharing, and medical and wellness benefits. The salary range is commensurate with the candidate’s location, experience, and skillset.