Category Management and Merchandise

A female and male team member sitting side by side laughing in a meeting

Two Commercial and Merchandise Coles team members working together in Coles SSC kitchen. Both team members are wearing Coles branded aprons

Stacey: I’m Stacey and I am the business Category Manager for the Coles Local.

I get the wonderful job of going into our Coles Local stores and seeing the plans that we've put into place come into light. And the best part about my job, I think is seeing customers shop it right in front of me.

Clark: My name is Clark Pickles. I'm the Senior Category Manager for Cereal and Nutritional snacks at Coles.

I like to describe it as running your own smaller business within a much larger business. There's entire cross-functional teams of Operations, Marketing, Supply Chain. And my role really is to get the best out of all of those different teams and make sure we're delivering fantastic things in stores.

Stacey: No two working days are the same which makes it exciting to work at Coles. They range from meeting with suppliers, tasting new innovation that's coming out to the market, as well as traveling across Australia and visiting food expos and some of the independents that do it the best to understand what's available in the market.

Clark: There's two things that really held my decision. I knew a couple of friends who already worked here and they couldn't say more positive things about working at Coles. And secondly, what excited me was the innovation that's happening within the business.So whether it's the Automated DC or Ocado, there's so much happening and so much to stick your tooth into that really energised me about starting working here.

The best part about my job is the people, whether it's the people I work with on a day-to-day basis who I gain energy from and have the opportunity to learn from. Or whether it's the people I can impact in stores across the country with the decisions we're making here.

Stacey: The piece of advice I would give to someone that is thinking about joining Coles, it's firstly YOLO. Go for it. You only get one life. I would also give yourself time to settle and that settle into Coles and also settle into your life outside of Coles.

It took me a while to find my feet and to be able to find connections and friendships that I've been able to build over a number of years.

Clark: If you're thinking about joining Coles, I'd say do it. There's such a great supporting culture within the business. There's opportunity to grow your career. It's a brilliant company to work for.