Category Manager - Womenswear

Overview:

The Category Manager – Women's Fashion owns the commercial performance (Sales, Margins and Bottomline) and customer experience of the Women's category at Centrepoint E-Commerce across Clothing, Footwear, Beauty, Bags and Accessories.

Key Responsibilities:

• Category strategy. Set the online category strategy, covering assortment direction, growth levers and online exclusives, and align on priorities with concepts and buying teams.
• Partnering with concepts and buyers. Recommend range gaps, depth, newness and exclusives based on data and customer insight, and track how they are implemented and what they deliver.
• Onsite merchandising. Own the Women and Beauty department pages, including page layouts, product ranking and sorting, banners, campaigns and seasonal or event-led trends.
• Content and customer experience. Improve product content, imagery, filters, search and navigation to raise discoverability and conversion.
• Performance analysis. Track sales, traffic, conversion, sell-through and availability, flag issues early, and drive corrective actions with the relevant teams.
• Trends and opportunities. Monitor consumer, fashion and beauty trends and the competitive landscape to identify gaps, white spaces and growth opportunities.
• Marketing : Work with Marketing on CRM, customer acquisition and retention campaigns for the category.
• Leadership reporting. Prepare and present category performance, insights and growth plans to senior leadership.

Ideal Candidate Profile

Qualifications:

• MBA (Retail, Marketing or Strategy preferred) or a graduate/postgraduate degree from NIFT or another recognised fashion management institute.

Experience:

• 5–8 years in fashion retail or e-commerce, across category management, buying, merchandising or planning.
• Hands-on experience with Women's fashion. Exposure to footwear, beauty or accessories is a strong plus.
• Proven e-commerce or omnichannel experience, with a working knowledge of online merchandising, conversion funnels and digital KPIs.
• GCC or value/mass-fashion retail experience is preferred.

Skills and competencies:

• Analytics. Strong commercial and numerical skills, including OTB, GMROI, sell-through, margin and markdown management. Advanced Excel, plus experience with BI tools such as Power BI
• AI fluency. Comfortable using AI tools (for example ChatGPT/Claude, AI forecasting and assortment tools, trend-intelligence platforms) to speed up analysis, reporting and decisions.
• Fashion sense. A real passion for fashion and beauty, with an instinct for trends and how to adapt them for a value-conscious customer.
• Influence. Able to drive outcomes through concepts, buying, marketing and content teams without direct authority.
• Communication. Strong storytelling and presentation skills, able to turn data into clear recommendations for leadership.
• Mindset. Results-driven, agile and comfortable working at pace.