Position Overview
The Product Manager (PM), Shop Solutions, leads the shop solutions product category with a focus on fixturing solutions. This role serves as the strategic authority for the Shop Solutions portfolio, determining which products, services, and solutions to bring to market and why, ensuring long‑term commercial viability and alignment with segment strategy. The PM 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 PM collaborates with multiple departments to ensure the product meets market needs and achieves business goals. The PM concentrates on the WHAT and WHY, while execution responsibilities (HOW and WHO) reside with Operations and Sales respectively. The PM acts as a portfolio gatekeeper, keeping investments, roadmap priorities, and lifecycle decisions aligned with segment strategy and long‑term growth objectives. The PM will also work 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 28037.
Company and Opportunity Overview
WNA aims to be a leading entrepreneurial player in terms of market share, agility, and game‑changing solutions. WNA provides value along the supply chain of our customers, from online purchase to their customers. Headquartered in the Charlotte Metro Area, North Carolina, WNA has around 500 employees and about $200 million in sales. The company focuses on the retail and distribution market segments with marquee customers such as Walmart, Amazon, and many large grocers and retailers. In addition to being the largest manufacturer of shopping carts in North America, WNA operates three additional main product segments plus a Service business that provides turnkey solutions for customer guidance (Access Systems), Shelving & Fixtures (Shop Solutions), and Material Handling products. Access Solutions delivers sophisticated customer guidance and loss prevention systems for major retailers, leveraging German‑engineered products and a strong installed base. This segment concentrates on protecting existing market share while pursuing adjacent opportunities in smart retail, autonomous store technology, and digital integration. WNA also offers a range of digital solutions integrated into our products, including advanced shopping cart containment systems, smart exit gate technology, and innovations for autonomous and semi‑autonomous retail stores. We continually expand and enhance our digital offerings to meet evolving customer needs and drive industry advancement. WNA is part of the Wanzl Group, headquartered in Germany, and operates 12 plants in 8 countries, delivering comprehensive, solutions‑driven service and deep knowledge of local markets through their 360° service.
Duties and Responsibilities
Product Strategy and Vision:
- Define and maintain a forward‑looking Shop Solutions product roadmap, identify 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.
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 percent including international
