Senior Category Manager – Tryano & Saks

INSPIRE | EXHILARATE | DELIGHT

For over six decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. The Group, in its endeavour to excel as a hybrid retailer, has reinforced its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of eight owned brands and over 300 international brands in the luxury, beauty, fashion, and art de vivre categories. More recently, the Group expanded its expertise into new categories of luxury watches, jewellery, and eyewear.

Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken with the customer at heart. Be it constantly reinventing itself or focusing on innovation to provide luxury experiences at over 750+ experiential retail stores, online and through mobile apps, each touch point leads to delighting the customer.

Today, Chalhoub Group stands for 14,000 skilled and talented professionals across seven countries, whose cohesive efforts have resulted in the Group being ranked third in the Middle East and first in Saudi Arabia as a Great Place to Work®.

To keep the innovation journey going, the Group has set up “The Greenhouse”, which is not just an innovation hub, but also an incubator space and accelerator for start-ups and small businesses in the region and internationally. This is just one of the several initiatives taken by the Group to reinvent itself, catalysed by forward thinking and future-proofing. The Group has also been embedding sustainability at the core of its business strategy with a clear commitment towards people, partners and the planet, and by being a member of the United Nations Global Compact Community and signatory of the Women’s Empowerment Principles.

What you’ll be doing  

The Sr. Category Manager – Beauty is responsible for driving the growth and turnover of beauty brands across the Tryano and Saks networks, both online and offline, and throughout the region. This role is accountable for achieving pre-defined objectives and budgets. The incumbent will serve as the primary liaison among brands, distributors, retailers, and internal departments. This includes providing clear guidance on stock management, marketing, and commercial strategies to ensure all teams operate in alignment. Your responsibilities will include: 

• Structure and implement the commercial strategy and processes, lead / own the function across all countries.
• Own the various categories with Beauty & Personal Care (make-up, skincare, hair, perfumes, bath, and body) and other trends to maintain market competitive advantage.
• Demonstrate strong insights and understanding of purchase behavior of consumers when it comes to beauty products and categories that will help drive business growth.
• Lead commercially viable negotiations are made in favor of the overall business decisions like contracts, agreements, return to vendor.
• Leverage from customer data, sales, and performance data while demonstrating exceptional awareness of market competition, regional clienteles, prices positioning and regional trends and consumer preferences.
• Accountable for onboarding new brands that will uplift the offer and category mix.
• Set yearly budget according to previous year’s performance, expected growth and new store opening/closing.
• Formulate, Negotiate & Drive yearly agreement & Joint Business plans with key retail partners to drive profitability and growth.
• Set monthly target per market and gather updates on weekly basis.
• Conduct market visits in the region to understand brand performance in specific point of sales.
• Coordinate the brand promotions, Co-operate with the Marketing team, merchandise team and local team.

What you’ll need to succeed

• Demonstrates a strong collaborative work ethic and builds effective working relationships, both internally and externally.
• Possesses strong financial, business, and commercial acumen with the ability to drive strategic initiatives.
• Flexible in understanding industry business cycles, demands, and their effects on financial results.
• Proven track record of managing profitability, including the ability to analyze and discuss financial impacts, status, and improvement strategies.
• Leads by example and fosters innovation, developing team succession planning to identify, select, and develop talent for future growth.
• Education: University degree in Business or a related field.
• Previous Experience: 10+ years in retail luxury, travel retail, business development, B2B, and/or distribution business.
• Linguistic Skills: Excellent in English; proficiency in Arabic and French preferred.
• Experience with multi-brand and multi-category environments is essential. Department store or Beauty Retailer experience is a plus.

We Invite All Applicants to Apply

It Takes Diversity Of Thought, Culture, Background, Differing Abilities and Perspectives to truly Inspire, Exhilarate and Delight our customers. At Chalhoub Group, we are committed to inclusion and diversity.

We welcome all applicants to apply and be part of our exciting future. We ensure equal opportunity for all our applicants without regard to gender, age, race, religion, national origin or disability status.