Category & Digital Merchandising Manager

Job Description

Team: Catalogue Management & Purchasing - dotted line into Marketing

Scope: 10+ brands across 7 European countries

Reports to: Head of Purchasing & Product Catalogue

Working Location: Hybrid, Belgium or France

Start: To be defined

Complementary products — lens care, eye drops, accessories, reading glasses and food supplements — are a key growth pillar for Vision Group. Unlike contact lenses, these products need to be discovered, not just reordered. They require smart assortment decisions, fragmented vendor management, and a merchandising approach built on relevance, psychology and data.

As Category & Digital Merchandising Manager, you own both sides: what we sell and how we sell it. You will define the complementary assortment, manage supplier relationships, and design the on-site experience that turns a lens transaction into a full vision care basket — and uses complementary products as an entry point to acquire new lens customers.

Your mission

• Own the complementary product assortment: ranging, catalogue quality and commercial performance across all Vision Group brands.
• Conduct regular market and competitor analysis — including trade shows, emerging brands and product innovation — to ensure our range stays relevant, differentiated and commercially compelling across all geographies.
• Design and optimise cross-sell and upsell mechanics at every stage of the customer journey — product pages, cart, checkout, post-purchase and reorder flows.
• Apply psychological merchandising tactics (social proof, scarcity, bundling, loss‑aversion framing) calibrated for discovery-driven, trust-based purchases.
• Use complementary products strategically to support our core business, such as acquisition, retention and customer journey of contact lenses through loss‑leader, eye-care routines, smart pricing and bundling.
• Monitor and improve key KPIs: attachment rate, AOV uplift, cross-sell CTR, bundle conversion and category P&L contribution.
• Use behavioural data (browse paths, past purchases, search terms) to personalise complementary recommendations by customer segment.
• Manage and optimise complementary products SEO, SEA and GEO and monitor its performances.
• Collaborate with field experts such as CRM, Performance Marketing, Newsletter, SEO/Content, Product management and UX teams — you are the bridge between catalogue and marketing activation.
• Drive complementary category growth and own P&L contribution: set and track revenue, margin and attachment rate targets alongside the core contact lens business.

Your profile

• A hands‑on profile who doesn't wait for others to unblock them. Whether it's pulling a report, digging into a data discrepancy or testing a hypothesis, you find a way forward — and you take pride in it.
• Numbers are not a chore for you — they are how you think. You naturally monitor, question and act on performance data, and you are comfortable building your own analysis rather than always relying on a BI team.
• Solid experience in digital merchandising, e-commerce or CRO, with a strong grasp of cross-sell, upsell and bundle mechanics in a multi-product environment.
• A good understanding of on‑site and off‑site SEO basics, and enough understanding of paid search — particularly Shopping / PMAX campaigns and product feeds — to spot opportunities and brief the performance marketing team effectively.
• Familiarity with psychological sales tactics and how to apply them to non‑habitual, discovery-driven product categories where trust and perceived benefit drive the purchase decision.
• Structured and autonomous: you manage competing priorities without losing the thread, keep stakeholders aligned without being chased, and deliver — even when not everything is perfectly defined.
• Business fluent in English.
• A background in health, wellness, optical, beauty, pharmacy or FMCG is a plus.

We offer you

• A strategic role with real ownership — from supplier negotiation to on‑site conversion — across a growing European business.
• A fast-moving, collaborative team with European scope and direct access to data, tools and decision-making.
• Based in Antwerp or Paris with hybrid flexibility; offices in BE, CH, FR, DE, IT and LT.
• Potential growth path: based on outcomes, the opportunity to build and lead a dedicated team.