Category Manager

Category Manager - Korea Town

Role Purpose

The Category Manager is responsible for managing the performance, development, go-to-market execution, assortment strategy, activations, and brand relationships for an assigned Korea Town category, such as Skincare, Makeup, or Hair & Body.

Reporting to the Category Director, the Category Manager acts as the main day-to-day category contact for brands and vendors, specifically for matters related to launch planning, marketing alignment, activations, collaborations, assortment management, novelties, storytelling, and ongoing commercial growth.

The role works cross-functionally with all internal departments and stakeholders to ensure each brand launch and category initiative is commercially strong, clearly prioritized, well-coordinated, analytically informed, and aligned with Korea Town's overall strategy.

The Category Manager is expected to run the assigned category with a strong trading mindset: tracking performance, identifying risks and opportunities, translating insights into action, and ensuring the category remains trend-led, differentiated, commercially productive, and execution-ready.

Key Responsibilities

1. Category Management & Development

• Manage the development and performance of an assigned Korea Town category.
• Translate the overall Korea Town strategy into category-specific plans, priorities, launches, and activations.
• Recommend category priorities, hero SKUs, focus brands, product pushes, commercial opportunities, and corrective action plans.
• Monitor and analyze performance at category, brand, SKU, launch, campaign, and channel level. Identify risks, opportunities, and corrective actions.
• Prepare regular category updates, insights, and recommendations. Ensure category decisions are supported by data, market insight, customer behavior, brand priorities, and commercial objectives.
• Support the positioning of Korea Town as a leading destination for Korean beauty through strong curation, newness, storytelling, and execution. Monitor Korean and Asian beauty trends relevant to the assigned category.
• Identify emerging product trends, ingredients, formats, claims, routines, packaging innovations, social trends, and consumer behaviors.
• Build and maintain a category novelties pipeline by brand, sub-category, and launch timing. Identify opportunities for exclusive launches, limited editions, collaborations, and differentiated product concepts.
• Monitor competitor activity, viral products, customer feedback, reviews, and local demand signals. Translate market, customer, and competitor insights into assortment, launch, campaign, education, and activation recommendations.

2. Brand & Vendor Relationship Management

• Act as the main day-to-day contact for assigned brands and vendors. Manage ongoing communication with assigned brands and vendors and build strong brand relationships focused on launches, activations, visibility, newness, collaboration, and growth.
• Work with brands to secure product information, training content, launch support, activation participation, campaign assets, and collaboration opportunities.
• Recommend and implement action plans for brand growth opportunities and escalate strategic partnership, exclusivity, investment, or risk topics.
• Coordinate with the Purchasing team where brand discussions impact stock, orders, replenishment, samples, GWPs, FOCs, or operational requirements.
• Ensure brand communication is commercially focused, structured, and aligned with Korea Town's priorities.

3. Brand Launch & Go-To-Market Management

• Lead and execute go-to-market planning for assigned brands within the category.
• Coordinate with all internal stakeholders and brand partners to build launch plans covering launch timing, hero SKUs, storytelling angles, activation ideas, marketing support, channel priorities, internal requirements, and expected commercial outcomes.
• Ensure all brand launches have clear commercial objectives, product priorities, visibility requirements, channel plans, and performance expectations.
• Conduct post-launch reviews to capture learnings, performance results, and next-step recommendations.
• Define and manage assigned-category launch readiness checkpoints in coordination with relevant teams.
• Ensure each launch has clear requirements covering assortment, hero SKUs, stock readiness alignment, product information, assets, marketing brief, Sales/Celebrity priorities, retail/e-commerce visibility, and launch timeline.
• Compare launch performance against commercial objectives and identify learnings by brand, SKU, channel, campaign, and customer response.
• Oversee brand fixture designs in alignment with Korea Town guidelines as well as development and communication of planograms to store teams in a timely manner.

4. Assortment Management & Execution

• Review the assortment performance, productivity, and identify gaps and opportunities for assortment optimization.
• Support the Category Director in defining the right balance between core products, newness, innovation, price positioning, and trend-led items.
• Monitor the balance between depth and breadth within assigned brands and sub-categories.
• Work with Purchasing to ensure assortment recommendations are supported by stock availability, ordering feasibility, and operational timelines.
• Monitor SKU lifecycle from launch to maturity, decline, relaunch, or exit recommendation.
• Identify slow-moving and non-performing SKUs and recommend commercial actions such as visibility support, bundling, activation, markdown support, repositioning, or discontinuation.

5. Campaigns, Activations & Commercial Calendar

• Coordinate with Marketing and Omni teams to ensure campaigns reflect category priorities and brand positioning.
• Provide Sales and Celebrity teams with clear category priorities, focus brands, hero SKUs, product education points, and conversion stories.
• Recommend category activations, animations, collaborations, trading moments, and campaign opportunities.
• Develop launch and campaign briefs for assigned category initiatives, including hero SKUs, key claims, product stories, customer education points, and channel priorities.
• Monitor campaign performance and recommend follow-up actions to improve sales, visibility, sell-through, and customer engagement.
• Ensure launches, activations, and campaigns are reviewed not only by execution quality but also by commercial impact.
• Track the effectiveness of promotions, activations, collaborations, and campaign activities within the assigned category.
• Review sales uplift, sell-through, hero SKU performance, channel performance, customer response, margin impact where available, and repeat potential.
• Analyze and communicate what works by category, brand, product type, channel, customer segment, and trading moment.
• Balance sales growth with profitability, brand positioning, and long-term category health.

6. Sales, Celebrity & Channel Alignment

• Provide category priorities to Sales and Celebrity teams based on brand importance, exclusivity, commercial opportunity, launch timing, and category focus.
• Recommend SKUs, product stories, selling points, in-store push priorities, and conversion opportunities.
• Align with Retail and E-commerce teams to ensure assigned category launches and campaigns receive appropriate visibility across channels.
• Analyze assigned-category performance across retail, e-commerce, social, influencer, and celebrity-led channels.
• Identify channel-specific opportunities and recommend differentiated product pushes where relevant.
• Gather feedback from relevant teams and stakeholders to refine category plans and improve execution.
• Support consistent category messaging across retail, e-commerce, social, influencer, and celebrity-led activities.

7. Cross-Functional Coordination

• Coordinate and collaborate for category and brand initiatives across internal teams, including but not limited to Purchasing, Sales, Marketing, Omnichannel, Training, etc.
• Ensure all teams are aligned on brand strategy, activation plans, launch timelines, campaign requirements, category priorities, brand needs, blockers, and next steps.
• Track dependencies and risks across functions to support smooth execution.
• Support regular trading, launch, and category alignment meetings.

Key Requirements

• Bachelor's degree and 5–7 years of experience in category management, buying, brand management, commercial management, or beauty retail.
• Strong understanding of beauty categories such as skincare, makeup, haircare, body care, Korean beauty, or Asian beauty.
• Experience managing brand/vendor relationships in an omnichannel, multi-brand environment.
• Strong commercial and analytical skills with the ability to interpret category, brand, SKU, launch, campaign, and channel-level performance. Ability to translate data and insights into clear commercial actions.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills across internal teams including, but not limited to, Marketing, Sales, Retail, E-commerce, Purchasing, and external partners.
• Strong analytical, communication, coordination, and presentation skills.
• Proactive, trend-aware, commercially driven, analytical, and comfortable working in a developing structure.