Location: Onsite four days per week - Kohler, WI
Opportunity
Kohler Co. is looking for a Senior Category Analyst to lead the analytical and operating engine for a category, sub-category, customer group, or major business process within our Category Strategy organization.
This senior individual contributor role sits at the intersection of category performance, forecasting, supply management, pricing, customer insights, and business strategy. You will turn complex data, market conditions, and customer signals into recommendations that influence category decisions and business outcomes.
Senior Category Analysts support multiple Product Managers and Category Leaders while serving as business owners for specific segments, initiatives, customer groups, or operating processes. The role requires strong analytical capability, sound business judgment, and the ability to influence decisions across Sales, Marketing, Operations, Finance, Supply Chain, and Product Management.
This position is intended to develop future Product Managers by progressively expanding business ownership, decision-making authority, and strategic influence within the category.
What You'll Do
Business Ownership and Category Leadership
- Serve as the business owner for assigned segments, initiatives, customer groups, or operating processes within the category.
- Carve out and exercise decision rights for defined areas of the business within agreed guardrails, escalating trade-offs when needed.
- Develop recommendations and decision options for Product Managers and Directors regarding pricing, forecasting, inventory, portfolio management, and business performance.
- Lead cross-functional problem solving on forecast accuracy, inventory risk, product transitions, pricing actions, and category execution.
- Present category performance, opportunities, risks, and recommendations to leadership teams and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Coach and develop Category Analysts and Category Analyst II associates through analytical problem solving and business decision making.
- Improve business processes, reporting, operating rhythms, and analytical capabilities that strengthen category performance.
Demand Forecasting, Supply and Inventory
- Own complex unit forecasts for assigned product lines, accounting for one-time events, macroeconomic conditions, customer inventory behavior, and category-specific dynamics.
- Translate point-of-sale, shipment, orders, and weeks-of-supply data into forecast enrichments and clear, actionable recommendations for the business.
- Anticipate supply shortages and excess, diagnose root causes at the product level, and partner with Supply Chain and Operations to resolve them.
- Manage the ramp-up and ramp-down of overlapping products through new product introductions and discontinuations, protecting in-stock performance while minimizing cash and capital employed.
Pricing and Category Performance
- Lead pricing analysis for the category, incorporating price elasticity into recommendations and grounding promotional proposals in the likelihood of achieving break-even.
- Apply an understanding of pricing tiers and the levers available in each channel to recommendations on list price, promotion, price realization, and margin outcomes.
- Assess portfolio effectiveness and product performance from launch through discontinuation, summarizing results and recommending action on dollar forecasting and sales performance.
- Monitor category performance against key indicators such as sell-through, weeks of supply, forecast accuracy, margin, and working capital, and report progress to peers and executives.
Insights, Customer and Competitive Intelligence
- Determine when customer and consumer input is needed to sharpen a decision, and select the right method including surveys, focus groups, usability tests, service and support analysis, field tests, or market visits.
- Distill customer, consumer, and competitive input into an actionable point of view for the category, working directly and alongside Research, Design, and Channel Marketing.
- Maintain current competitive and market intelligence including product catalogs, price lists, promotions, and new product introductions, and use it to inform pricing, positioning, and innovation recommendations.
- Compile reporting and present findings and recommendations to cross-functional partners and leadership.
Product and Commercial Partnership
- Influence product, portfolio, pricing, launch, and discontinuation decisions through fact-based analysis and business recommendations.
- Partner with Product Management on portfolio decisions, aligning demand planning, supply, customer, and financial signals with the product roadmap.
- Support Channel Marketing on launch plans, promotional programming, and execution across the current portfolio.
