Category Management Intern

Solaris was created in France in 1994 with the aim to offer its customers the “Ultimate Sunglass Selection” on premium locations in Europe and to provide a unique, technical, and fashionable Customer Experience. The own stores network expanded in France and southern Europe to reach more than 1500 points of sales across 23 countries.

Solaris is now the global category manager for sunglasses within GrandVision group. It is rapidly expanding its sun retail concept in more than 20 countries and is one of the growth engines of GrandVision. The objective is to drive GrandVision’s position in the global sunglass market under the Solaris brand and expand outside of GrandVision.

GrandVision is building its sunglass business globally under its Solaris global retail brand, off and online. Current turnover is about €300mn, delivered through 4 formats. Whilst about 130 standalone stores are operated, most of the sales come from shop-in-shops (or, in smaller stores, through sunglass displays) in GrandVision’s existing over 5.800 stores.

The ambition of Solaris is to have full global coverage, leveraging a smoothly operated “hard franchise model”, with the GrandVision Solaris organisation as the “franchisor” and the local countries/existing stores as “franchisees”. In addition to driving global expansion of Solaris through a tight franchise model, GrandVision also wants to look into other business development opportunities for the Solaris brand (e.g., airport retail, department stores, regional Master Franchise). Profitability should grow further at the same time.

If you cannot wait to put all the knowledge you have gained during your studies into practice and to bring your ideas to the table, this internship might be a good fit for you. As a Category Management Intern, you will be responsible for the communication with countries, managing analyses, market research, and many other interesting tasks that may come your way. Category Management is involved in all aspects of the organization, therefore, you will be able to get a good understanding of the business functioning in terms of collaboration with stakeholders and strategic plans. During this internship, you will be supporting one of the most international teams in GrandVision. Thus, this is a great opportunity for you to create an interesting network with the different stakeholders and to gain real-life experience.

Developing Careers & Potential

Within all GrandVision companies we recruit for a career, not just a job. We are passionate about customer satisfaction and develop our people to look for growth potential within the job and within the company. Our preference is to always promote internally where possible. So, wherever people start, there’s always somewhere else to go. We strive for continuous improvement and our new recruits help us to further raise the future potential of our company. Our whole business is full of people who have gone on to achieve a successful career through experiencing a variety of different roles in different locations and area of our business. We continually support and develop our people who have the desire, ambition and potential to grow.

With customers, stores and employees located in over 40 countries, GrandVision shows diversity to be at the core of its success. GrandVision is a global company proud and committed to be an equal opportunity employer.

Responsibilities

1. Product & trends management

• Support Category managers in running sell-out/article performance analysis at a global level in order to support strategy definition.
• Participate in the collection of local trends and products needs from countries (23 countries, 35 banners) to create detailed product brief for both Exclusive Brands (EB) and Non-Exclusive Brands (NEB)
• Prepare benchmarks on Market opportunities and analyse available market surveys.
• Be part of new brand opportunity evaluation with trends team.
• Brand Launchpack writing on catman demand.
• Collect main key delivery milestones dates from Countries (main NEB launches/campaigns, EB ranges).
• Support the development of global trends reports: benchmark, competition, new brands, new ambassador, brands update, PR…
• Support the Product & Marketing specific campaigns implementation & impact measurement.

2. Global-Local Category management community animation Product assortment committee

• Support the Strategic Product assortment committee power point preparation with category management team, follow up of documentation needed from suppliers & Opcos every 3 months.
• Be the owner of the presentation with all stakeholders for the global-local category management calls every 2 weeks.

3. Showroom

• Support the continuous optimization of the Global Sun Product showroom in Schiphol (Sample orders, stock management and planograms).

Key skills, knowledge and experience

• Bachelor’s degree Business / marketing (business school)
• Internship experience in a product management/retail environment will be appreciated / 3 months minimum
• Excellent skills with Excel (+ MS office, PowerPoint, Word)
• Strong knowledge of English (written & spoken)
• International profile
• Highly adaptable to new environments; with a natural ability to embrace learning and develop through experience
• High level of energy and ambition to realise a positive impact
• Positive, customer first, can do attitude
• Autonomous, proactive and dynamic

More about GrandVision

GrandVision is a global leader in optical retailing and delivers high quality and affordable eye care to more and more customers around the world. The high-quality eye care offered by GrandVision includes a wide range of services provided by its vision expert, prescription glasses including frames and lenses, contact lenses and contact lens care products, and sunglasses both plain and with prescription lenses. These products are offered through leading optical retail banners across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia. GrandVision serves its customers in over 7,200 stores and with more than 39,000 employees which are providing every day that in EYE CARE, WE CARE MORE.

Some key figures

• 7,260 stores in more than 40 countries
• 434,000 daily store visits
• 15.1 million Eyeglass & sunglass sold
• Over 39,000 employees worldwide
• Revenue EUR 3.5 billion FY
• EBITA EUR 266 million

Our vision is to provide high quality and affordable eye care to more and more people around the world. By doing so, GrandVision aspires to help them realize their full potential in life.

More about GrandVision: www.grandvision.com

More about Solaris: www.solarissunglass.com

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/grandvision

Find our Annual Report here: http://annualreport.grandvision.com

NB. If you have not heard back from us after 27 days, please consider your application not to be successful.