.The JobThe Category Management Specialist will have responsibility over key and strategic categories for the company. They will leverage fact-based analytics and customer research to develop consumer-relevant retail assortments and planograms. Improving the store model is the pillar of Ace's long-term retail strategy, and developing the most efficient, productive and differentiated assortments/planograms for our Retailers.What you'll do:- Execute existing Merchandising Analytics and Category Management reports and utilize knowledge and experience to develop interpretations on the data.- Keep current with merchandising categories and retail trends through communication with Merchandising department managers and merchant teams.- Support ad hoc incoming analytic requests and other assigned tasks and projects for the Business Intelligence and Merchandising Operations teams.- Achieve alignment with Merchandising on final space allocation and product assortment, meeting category review goals and Ace benchmarks. Manage all aspects of assortment and planograms, from analytics and recommendations to cross-functional alignment and execution.- Perform SKU count and penetration analysis for all merchandising skus on a scheduled basis or when needed. Tracking includes merchant level data, category, and RSC level data analysis.- Perform tracking and analysis of merchandising categories for use in all merchandising vendor meetings and line review and be an active participant.- Proactively monitor category KPI's to identify opportunities to make assortment and/or space/planogram changes to improve category performance and to understand impact of prior changes made. Work with management to align on key actions to take based on results and work with cross-functional category team to act as needed.- Work cross-functionally with different departments (e.G. Category Management, Merchandising, Retail Pricing, Field Operations, Inventory, etc) to ensure that assortment and space recommendations are "retail ready," aligned with overall category strategy and communicated effectively.- Complete special projects/requests as assigned by management team.What you will need: Experience and Technical Requirements:- 1- 3 years' experience in merchandising / inventory control / product management, space planning/business analytics and consumer research