Position OverviewThe Product Manager (PM), Shop Solutions, will be responsible for driving the success of the shop solutions product (primarily fixturing solutions) category. This role is the strategic authority for the Shop Solutions portfolio, responsible for defining what products, services, and solutions are brought to market and why, ensuring long-term commercial viability and alignment to segment strategy. The Product Manager owns product strategy, roadmap, and lifecycle performance for catalogue-based and customer driven shelving, fixtures, and integrated retail solutions, with accountability for product-market fit, margin profile, and portfolio optimization. The Product Manager will work closely with various departments to ensure the product meets market needs and achieves business goals. The Product Manager operates as a strategic function focused on the "WHAT" and "WHY," while execution responsibility ("HOW" and "WHO") resides with Operations and Sales respectively. The PM acts as a portfolio gatekeeper, ensuring investments, roadmap priorities, and lifecycle decisions remain aligned to segment strategy and long-term growth objectives.
The Product Manager will also work closely with product management and operations in Europe, to leverage know-how and accelerate our success in the North American Market.
This position will be located at the Corporate Center for Wanzl North America (WNA) in Denver NC.
Duties and Responsibilities- Product Strategy and Vision:
- Define and maintain a forward-looking Shop Solutions product roadmap, identifying portfolio gaps, standardization opportunities, and growth platforms across shelving, fixtures, and integrated retail solutions. Lead portfolio strategy decisions including buy/build/partner trade-offs and product rationalization.
- Synthesize market intelligence, competitive benchmarking, and voice-of-customer (VOC) insights to define winning product strategies and right-to-win positions.
- Drive internal strategy to ensure the company develops the necessary know-how, business processes, and structure to sustain and grow the retail solutions segment.
- Train and support internal teams on product knowledge and best practices.
- Product Lifecycle Management:
- Own lifecycle strategy across all phases (ideation through end-of-life), including target cost, pricing, and margin profile for each product family.
- Define market requirements and prioritize roadmap initiatives based on strategic impact, profitability, and scalability; not customer-specific customization.
- Communicate the roadmap to stakeholders and ensure alignment with business objectives.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Orchestrate alignment between D&D, Sales, Operations, and Finance to ensure roadmap execution supports strategic, financial, and operational objectives.
- Provide clear product requirements (WHAT/WHY) to D&D while ensuring technical trade-offs are aligned to commercial objectives.
- Enable Sales through product positioning, pricing strategy, and standardized solution frameworks, while maintaining clear separation from deal-level execution. Ensure effective communication and coordination with European product management and operations teams to leverage expertise and accelerate market success in North America.
- Customer and Market Focus:
- Lead structured VOC programs to identify unmet customer needs, emerging trends, and opportunities for differentiated solutions. Translate customer needs into scalable, repeatable product offerings rather than customer-specific engineering solutions. Act as the voice of the customer within the company.
- Revenue and Business Goals:
- Support the Head of Segment(HOS) in developing revenue targets and budgets for the product category.
- Own product-level P&L performance, including price, cost, and margin targets across the lifecycle. Drive pricing strategy and policy to balance market competitiveness with margin expansion and portfolio profitability.
- Market Analysis:
- Partner with Finance to define business cases, NPV/IRR outcomes, and ongoing product performance analytics.Market Analysis
- Go-to-Market Strategy:
- Deliver structured outputs including VOC reports, competitive insights, and product-market fit analyses to inform roadmap decisions.
- Define product positioning, target customer typologies, and launch strategies for Shop Solutions portfolio offerings.
- Enable Sales with standardized playbooks, pricing frameworks, and product training; not execution of marketing campaigns
- Own pricing strategy and policy, including discount guardrails and value-based, customer aligned pricing models.
Required Skills and Experience:- Minimum of 3 years' experience as a Product Manager or similar role
- Minimum of five (5) years' experience in retail or companies supplying the retail market
- Bachelor's degree, MBA strongly desired
- Strong leadership and excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications
- Demonstrated success defining and launching products
- Excellent teamwork skills
- Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority
- Must be able to travel up to 20% including international