Vice President of Wholesale Merchandising

As the Vice President of Wholesale Merchandising at Balsam Brands, you will set the strategic direction and vision for the merchandising function across the GE and wholesale brands. You will lead a high-performing team and oversee all aspects of category development, ensuring product assortments, packaging, and pricing strategies are optimized for scale and aligned with long-term growth and brand equity objectives in wholesale and mass market retail channels. This executive role requires a visionary leader with deep expertise in consumer insights, product positioning, and commercialization strategy to elevate our presence across physical and omnichannel environments.

This full-time position reports to the Chief Merchandising Officer and is expected to work in a hybrid model, which currently includes Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in our bay area offices. 

What you’ll do:

Strategic Leadership & Vision

• Define and evolve the 3–5-year merchandising strategy across wholesale and growth channels, ensuring alignment with company-wide objectives and brand positioning.
• Lead enterprise-level portfolio planning, identifying white space opportunities and innovation areas to strengthen market leadership.

Category Ownership & Commercial Impact

• Oversee category performance across all growth brands, holding accountability for revenue, margin, and market share goals.
• Guide high-impact merchandising and pricing strategies, ensuring product differentiation and customer value alignment in mass market settings.

Team Development & Cross-functional Influence

• Lead the team to achieve business outcomes by promoting collaboration and alignment with organizational values; translate company initiatives into a clear vision, aligning team actions with company priorities while fostering performance and professional development.
• Foster deep collaboration across Product Development, Planning, Marketing and Operations to ensure end-to-end commercialization success.

Market & Consumer Insight Integration

• Champion the use of market data, retail trends, and shopper insights to drive decision-making and innovation across assortments and packaging.
• Serve as a thought leader externally, shaping the company's perspective on retail trends and customer behavior in the category.

Strategic Partnerships & Vendor Management

• Oversee high-stakes vendor partnerships and contract negotiations, driving long-term value creation and supply chain resilience.
• Represent Balsam Brands in critical partner engagements, including national buyer meetings, trade shows, and executive briefings.
• Collaborate with key vendor and manufacturing partners on product development, ensuring innovation pipelines align with market trends, cost targets, and scalability requirements.

What you bring to the table:

• 17+ years of progressive experience in merchandising, category management, or product strategy, including executive-level leadership.
• Demonstrated success leading strategic merchandising for high-volume, mass market brands across omnichannel environments.
• Expertise in assortment architecture, shelf strategy, planogramming, and consumer packaging for physical retail.
• Exceptional financial acumen, with a proven track record of managing complex P&Ls and optimizing margin performance.
• Strong leadership and talent development skills, with experience building high-functioning teams and managing through change.
• Deep understanding of retail economics, consumer behavior, and supply chain dynamics.
• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.

About Us: Balsam Brands is a global, omnichannel retailer with roots in holiday and home décor. We strive for excellence in everything we do and present a unique opportunity for those seeking to have a meaningful impact in a people-first company that values relationship building, authenticity, and doing the right thing. We have steadily growing teams in Boise, the Bay Area, Dublin, the Philippines, Canada, and Mexico.  

The company's mission is to create joy together. We empower our team and partners to love what they do, provide products and experiences that inspire meaningful moments with family and friends, and give back to our families and communities in impactful ways. When you join Balsam Brands, you'll find a culture of caring people doing challenging work and building a welcoming workplace.

• Check out our flagship brand, Balsam Hill: www.balsamhill.com
• Balsam Brands in Forbes: https://bit.ly/balsambrandsforbes2023

• Balsam Brands on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/balsam-brands/
• Glassdoor: https://bit.ly/balsambrands-glassdoor

At Balsam Brands, we strive to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package. For permanent, full-time team members, our current package includes:

• Competitive compensation, including a cash-based incentive plan; salary is reviewed yearly and may be adjusted as part of the normal compensation review process
• Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage, with 100% of monthly premiums covered for team members, and 85%+ employer-paid premiums for other coverage tiers that include dependents
• Up to $2,000 annual funding toward HSA accounts
• Medical, transit, dependent care FSA
• Infertility coverage offered on all medical plans
• Generous parental leave program and flexible return options
• Company-paid life and AD&D insurance
• Company-paid short and long-term disability insurance
• 401(k) with dollar-for-dollar company match up to $4,000 per calendar year
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and other mental health and wellness perks
• Paid holidays, annual shutdown week, PTO, and volunteer time-off (VTO) packages
• Paid 5-week sabbatical leave after 10 years of employment
• Annual continuous learning benefit up to $1,000 per person, per fiscal year
• Up to $300 flexible reimbursement to support setup of new team member's work-from-home environment
• Generous team member merchandise discount
• Valuable extras: identity theft protection, subsidized parking, monthly wellness, pet insurance, accident & critical illness insurance

The base pay range for this position is: $205,000 to $256,000. Please note that placement within the posted salary range is based on several factors, including geographic location, experience, skills, alignment with role requirements and other job-related factors. It is uncommon for offers to be made at the top of the range, as this typically reflects a candidate who exceeds all role requirements and brings significant, directly applicable experience. We benchmark our pay ranges against current external data sources and regularly review compensation for our team members. Balsam Brands is committed to providing our team members with an internally fair, externally competitive, and fiscally prudent total compensation package administered in a simple and consistent manner.

At Balsam Brands, we strive to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive team to fulfill our purpose to create joy together. Balsam Brands is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage people from all backgrounds, ages, abilities, and experiences to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, citizenship, marital or family status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy or caregiver status, veteran status, or any other legally protected status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.

#LI-Hybrid

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.