Description:
The Brand Manager, for Private Label, Commercial Strategy, and Grease is responsible for leading Valvoline North America’s private label strategy and implementation across NAPA and additional distributor accounts. This role owns development, commercialization, pricing, and lifecycle management of private label product portfolios, ensuring competitiveness, profitability, and strong customer partnerships. This leader works closely with Product Strategy on the innovation master plan and collaborates with Category Management and Analytics to shape pricing and promotional strategies. Due to the importance of private label in this role, experience managing or supporting private label products—ideally in the automotive aftermarket—is highly valuable.
The Brand Manager also directly leads our growing, branded Grease business. Additionally, this role directly manages an Associate Brand Manager responsible for our fast-growing branded Coolants business, and branded Gear Oils, where we maintain strong #1 category leadership.
Key Responsibilities Include Private Label Strategy & Portfolio Leadership
- Serve as the marketing lead for private label and distributor customers, delivering business reviews, line reviews, and strategic recommendations in conjunction with Sales.
- Serve as the marketing lead for commercial strategy in the specialty automotive channel.
- Translate customer requirements, category trends, and competitive insights into product recommendations and category storytelling.
- Contribute to innovation, product and portfolio development, SKU architecture, with the Product Strategy team, leading new items through the stage gate process into commercialization.
- Analyze and assess the feasibility, attractiveness, and strategic fit of bidding on new private label business opportunities, including competitive benchmarking, capability assessment, and financial implications.
- Partner with Sales on joint business planning, customer negotiations, and program execution to hit annual financial targets.
- Partner with Category Management and Analytics, Pricing, and the Trade Marketing team to develop pricing strategies, promotional frameworks, and competitive assessments
Grease Leadership
- Develop the annual category strategy for Grease, including portfolio positioning.
- Analyze category, customer, and marketplace performance trends to identify opportunities for assortment optimization, innovation, and demand creation.
- Partner with Sales to support customer-specific category presentations, line reviews, and recommendations that drive distribution gains and incremental growth.
- Collaborate with Supply Chain, Product Strategy, and Finance to ensure forecasting accuracy, margin performance, and operational readiness for new or updated Grease SKUs.
Team Leadership
- Manage and develop one Associate Brand Manager leading Gear Oil, and Coolants.
- Provide coaching and strategic direction to hit annual financial targets.
- Own additional customer meetings and content development as needed by the business.
What You’ll Need
- Bachelor’s degree required
- 4+ years of experience in brand management, private label marketing, or product marketing.
- Experience managing private label products—preferably in the automotive aftermarket—or private label experience in any consumer category is highly preferred.
- People management experience.
- Strong strategic and commercial thinking.
- Process and detail-oriented.
- Experience with pricing and category analysis.
- Ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders.
- Excellent communication and project management skills.