Senior Manager – Space & Assortment Range Management

About the Role

A pivotal leadership role responsible for maximizing store profitability and enhancing the customer shopping experience by aligning macro-space allocation with localized product ranging. This role oversees the end-to-end process of how much physical space a category receives (Floor Planning/Layout) and exactly which products are placed within that space (Range Operations). The successful candidate will leverage shopper insights, sales performance data, and market trends to build cohesive strategies for new stores, remodels, and business-as-usual trading.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development and optimization of macro-space floor plans for new stores, renovations, and format conversions to ensure optimal customer flow and logical category adjacencies.
• Conduct robust analysis on space-to-sales performance, determining the right square footage and linear space allocation for each department and category based on profitability and strategic growth targets.
• Collaborate with Construction, Format Development, and Store Operations to ensure that physical store layouts are built according to the strategic merchandising brief and within budget.
• Utilize floor plan heat-mapping and Customer Decision Trees (CDT) to position high-traffic, margin-accretive categories in premium store locations.
• Direct the store ranging strategy, ensuring that the right mix of products is available across different store clusters, formats, and localized demographics.
• Manage the end-to-end category review calendar, guiding the Commercial (Buying) and SRD teams in analyzing SKU productivity, rationalizing underperforming items, and launching new lines.
• Develop data-driven store grading and clustering models (e.g., urban vs. suburban, large vs. small footprint) to tailor range width and depth, maximizing relevance for local shoppers.
• Oversee the systems and processes that control store-level assortments, preventing store over-ranging (which causes backroom clutter) or under-ranging (which causes out-of-stocks).