Assistant Category Manager

Lifestyle is a leading retail destination, specialising in Beauty, Fashion, and Home products. Established in 1998, Lifestyle has consistently delivered a distinctive shopping experience, and an extensive selection of brands and products across colour cosmetics, perfumes, personal care, fashion accessories, home essentials, and home fragrance. With its chain of more than 160 retail stores spread across the GCC, coupled with a rapidly growing E-commerce platform, Lifestyle has established itself as an omnichannel destination-of-choice for Beauty and Fashion serving more than 4 million customers every year.

Role: Assistant Category Manager

Category: Perfumes

Role Purpose

The Category Manager is responsible for driving the growth, profitability, and market leadership of assigned fragrance brands, private label development, and impulse retail channels. This role blends strategic category leadership, end-to-end merchandise planning, cross-functional project execution, and vendor management to deliver financial targets and optimise inventory performance.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Category & Brand Management

• P&L & Performance Ownership: Take full accountability for category sales, gross margins, sell-through, and inventory health (OTB, stock turns, and aged stock reduction).
• Brand Strategy & Expansion: Align brand portfolios with overall category goals; identify growth opportunities, brand exclusives, and market gaps through competitive benchmarking and trend analysis.
• Commercial Negotiations: Lead vendor negotiations regarding trading terms, margins, promoter support, marketing contributions, and Customer Value Management (CVM) initiatives.

2. Private Label Product Development & Innovation

• End-to-End Product Lifecycle Leadership: Serve as the strategic owner for private label perfume ranges, steering projects from initial scent concept and formulation through cross-functional approvals to in-store launch.
• Supplier & Brief Management: Direct perfume houses and packaging suppliers on briefs, formulation benchmarks, target pricing, and quality standards; evaluate and approve scent samples and components.
• Cross-Functional Enablement: Manage vendor creation, contract closures, and regulatory compliance by orchestrating cross-functional alignments across Finance, Legal, Quality, and Supply Chain with strong understanding of compliance requirements for private labels.

3. Merchandise Financial Planning & Inventory Optimisation

• Assortment & OTB Planning: Lead financial, assortment, and Open-to-Buy (OTB) planning, setting sales targets, margins, and stock allocations across store networks, categories, and channel mix.
• In-Season Management & Replenishment: Monitor daily/weekly performance against budgets (sales vs. stock, margin inflows, promo lift) and execute corrective actions, reorders, or markdowns to maximise sell-through.
• Promotional Strategy: Design and evaluate category promotions, ensuring promotional pricing and margins align with inventory reduction targets and bottom-line profit goals.
• Sales Performance Review & Inventory Management

4. Execution

• Store Operations & Engagement: Build direct engagement channels with retail store cashiers and training teams to drive up selling at checkout. Perform routine store visits to audit execution and uncover growth levers.
• In-Store Execution: Partner with Visual Merchandising (VM) and Retail Operations to ensure optimal brand visibility, planogram compliance, and flawless campaign execution across all retail touchpoints.
• Management of critical path
• Trend forecast management
• Vendor Onboarding & Contract Management

5. Cross-Functional Leadership & Operational Governance

• 360-Degree Go-to-Market (GTM): Coordinate with Marketing, VM, E-Commerce, and Supply Chain teams to ensure launch calendars are fully supported across digital and physical touchpoints.
• Supply Chain Efficiency: Work alongside supply chain teams to maintain healthy replenishment cycles, preventing out-of-stock scenarios in top doors while mitigating warehouse overstock.
• Team & Stakeholder Management: Lead category team operations, setting Clear Performance Indicators (KPIs/KRAs), mentoring junior staff, and delivering regular performance reviews and presentation updates to senior executive leadership.

Key Requirements:

• 5 years' experience in beauty or retail buying
• Exposure to multi-brand and omni-channel retail
• Advanced level proficiency in MS Excel
• Experience in buying budgets & vendor management
• Product development & research experience
• Good financial and business acumen
• Negotiation skills
• Relationship management
• Attention to detail
• Planning & execution abilities
• Strong communication skills