Position Overview

The Senior Director, Global Category Merchandising – Hydration leads the global strategy, merchandising, line architecture, and commercial performance for Stanley 1913’s Hydration category. The role integrates consumer insights, competitive dynamics, and financial goals to build a profitable, channel‑right, culturally relevant global assortment.

This leader translates brand vision and market intelligence into multi‑year roadmaps, pricing architecture, lifecycle strategies, and innovation opportunities. They operate cross‑functionally to drive long‑range growth while ensuring seasonal excellence and detailed global go‑to‑market execution.

With significant P&L influence, this role develops the future of the Hydration category through strategic vision, strict commercial execution, and global leadership—ensuring the category remains culturally iconic, commercially strong, and positioned for sustained growth.

What You’ll Do

Global Category Strategy & Ownership

• Own the comprehensive worldwide merchandising strategy for Hydration, ensuring alignment with brand vision, enterprise financial goals, and regional market opportunities.
• Own seasonal line architecture and multi-year category roadmaps, driving a profitable, consumer-right assortment across channels and geographies.
• Define segmentation strategies across wholesale, DTC, marketplace, and e-commerce channels to ensure channel-right assortments and profitable market penetration.
• Act as the global category authority in pre-line, line reviews, executive forums, and key account presentations.

Product portfolio & lifecycle management

• Define and optimize the global product portfolio through data-driven insights, supervising SKU productivity, lifecycle planning, margin performance, and franchise management.
• Lead SKU rationalization and complexity reduction initiatives to improve efficiency and margin health.
• Partner with Product and Design to shape innovation pipelines, identify whitespace opportunities, and guide new product initiatives rooted in consumer and driven insights.
• Ensure focused product lifecycle management from concept through product retirement.

Pricing & commercial architecture

• Own global pricing frameworks and price architecture, ensuring alignment with market positioning, consumer expectations, and financial targets.
• Partner closely with Planning and Sales to align pricing strategy with margin optimization, channel strategy, and revenue planning.
• Evaluate competitive landscape, elasticity, and regional pricing dynamics to guide strategic trade-offs.

Insights, market analysis & forecasting

• Coordinate comprehensive market, consumer, and competitive analyses to advise assortment decisions, positioning strategies, and segmentation models.
• Synthesize category analytics into revenue planning, margin forecasting, and enterprise-level long-range planning inputs.
• Leverage sell-in and sell-through performance metrics to refine strategies in response to market shifts and demand signals.

Go-to-market leadership

• Advise the global GTM process for Hydration, ensuring seasonal readiness, launch alignment, and cross-functional clarity across Merchandising, Product, Sales, Marketing, and Supply Chain.
• Lead development of merchandising tools and selling assets, including line plans, merchandising guides, price architecture frameworks, and sell-in/sell-through storytelling.
• Ensure product positioning and communication strategies are cohesive, compelling, and market-relevant across global regions.

Cross-functional & organizational leadership

• Lead and influence a high-performing global merchandising team, fostering strong people leadership and talent development.
• Partner seamlessly with Product, Sales, Marketing, Insights, Planning, Finance, Operations and the Regional Teams to ensure alignment from strategy to execution.
• Actively remove blockers, manage high-stakes trade-offs, and serve as the decision-maker in sophisticated category issues.
• Ensure merchandising plans are implemented with precision and operational rigor.

Long-range growth & innovation

• Champion the 3–5 year long-range plan for Hydration, identifying expansion vectors across product innovation, regional growth, and channel development.
• Stay ahead of emerging industry trends, consumer behaviors, sustainability expectations, and competitive innovations.
• Balance breakthrough growth opportunities with disciplined financial stewardship.

Who You Are

• Bachelor’s degree in Merchandising, Business, Marketing, Finance, Retail Management, or equivalent.
• 12+ years of progressive merchandising, category management, or product strategy experience, including senior/global leadership.
• Proven success in assortment planning, pricing architecture, lifecycle management, and large‑scale go‑to‑market execution.
• Experience leading global or multi‑region category strategies with meaningful P&L ownership.
• Expertise in product lifecycle management, SKU rationalization, segmentation, and pricing strategy.
• Solid understanding of consumer behavior, market trends, and competitive analysis.
• Sophisticated financial acuity in budgeting, forecasting, margin optimization, and sales analysis.
• Ability to align merchandising, marketing, and sales strategies for successful global launches.
• Knowledge of wholesale, DTC, e‑commerce, and marketplace channels.
• Proficiency with PLM systems (e.g., Centric), ERP platforms, and sophisticated Excel modeling.
• Strong data synthesis and executive‑level interpersonal skills.
• Ability to adapt strategies quickly to market and business shifts.
• Tried people leadership with experience building and scaling high‑performing global teams.

Stanley 1913 is committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment. Stanley 1913 is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please reach out to [email protected]. 

Stanley 1913 is a total rewards company, which includes rewards beyond base salary. At Stanley 1913, full-time employees are eligible for an annual bonus, based on company and individual results. In addition, we offer a variety of employee benefits, personalized time off, 14-Paid holidays, dental, vision, 401(k), and much more.