Leadership
Leading across the table
The best category decisions are made with merchants, marketers, and vendors in the same conversation.
A category manager rarely owns every lever. Price, content, campaign, and supply sit with different teams. The role is to help those teams decide as one.
A short, shared view of the customer does more than a long deck. When everyone can say who the assortment is for, the argument about a single style becomes easier to settle.
A useful meeting
- Start with the customer, not the target
- Put the trade-off on the table
- Leave with one owner and one date
Cross-functional work is not a meeting cadence. It is the willingness to be persuaded, and to persuade, before the season is already live.