Senior Manager - Merchandise Strategy

About the Role

• Own the end-to-end merchandise strategy for Axtra Club (ST.175), translating the Costco/Sam's Club warehouse-club model into a Thailand-relevant assortment across categories, starting with DGF as the anchor department.
• Define category-level 'game changer' assortment concepts (e.g. Premium Wine & Champagne, Specialty Coffee, Korean/Japanese Import Snack, Premium Confectionery, Cold Beverage) that differentiate Axtra Club from core Makro and from other modern trade competitors.
• Direct SKU-level gap analysis against Nielsen Retail Measurement and Euromonitor brand-share data to identify assortment gaps, brand ranking mismatches, and white-space opportunities versus the market.
• Set the assortment architecture principles for the format: SKU rationalization vs. traditional Makro, pack-size and unit-economics logic, member-value positioning, and own-brand vs. national-brand mix.
• Partner with Buying, Category Management, Own Brand, and Store Operations to convert strategy into buy plans, supplier negotiations, and planogram-ready assortment lists.
• Build and present management-level decks and business cases (PowerPoint, grounded in Nielsen/Euromonitor/internal sales data) to secure sign-off on category revamps and new format expansion.
• Establish repeatable frameworks and tools (keep/review/delist logic, gap-analysis templates, competitive benchmarking) that can be reused as the format rolls out to additional categories and locations.
• Track post-launch performance of revamped categories and feed learnings back into the next wave of assortment decisions.
• Manage and develop junior analyst(s) supporting the data and SKU-level workstreams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, or related field; MBA an advantage.
• 5–8+ years in category management, merchandising, or buying within retail/wholesale, FMCG, or a membership/warehouse-club format; direct experience with Costco, Sam's Club, or similar formats is a strong plus.
• Demonstrated ability to build assortment strategy from syndicated data (Nielsen, Euromonitor) rather than directional judgment alone.
• Strong commercial acumen: comfortable owning a business case end-to-end, from data to management presentation to execution handoff.
• Advanced Excel/PowerPoint skills; experience handling large syndicated datasets (including non-standard file formats) is an advantage.
• Strong stakeholder management across Buying, Category Management, and senior leadership.