Are you ready to shape the future of our Hand Protection range and drive commercial growth across this category?
As our Product & Procurement Manager, you’ll own the commercial performance and product direction of our Hand Protection categories. From managing strategic suppliers and leading tenders to developing innovative own-label products, you’ll play a key role in shaping our range and delivering growth.
This is a role for someone who thrives across product, procurement and commercial performance. You’ll turn customer and market insight into effective range strategies, drive supplier performance and ensure our products deliver the right balance of quality, value, service and profitability.
The role is for our Hand Protection category, but we are open to receiving applications from candidates in similar roles who may have owned a different safety product or PPE category.
Our Product & Procurement role is a hybrid position, with a mix of home working and from our Head Office in Hull.
Key responsibilities include:
- Owning and delivering category sales, gross margin, contribution and budget targets across your assigned PPE product areas
- Setting the commercial direction for the category, translating market insight, customer demand and business priorities into clear range, supplier and procurement plans
- Leading tender-led sourcing and procurement activity, ensuring robust cost negotiation, supplier selection, value creation and risk control
- Managing day-to-day vendor performance across service, availability, quality, cost, innovation and commercial support
- Building and controlling a balanced portfolio of proprietary brands and own-label products to maximise category relevance, competitiveness and margin return
- Driving own-label development from specification through launch, ensuring commercial viability, compliance, customer fit and differentiated market positioning
- Controlling product lifecycle decisions, including range entry, exit, consolidation, substitution and rationalisation
- Using sales, margin, stock, service and supplier performance data to identify underperformance and take corrective commercial action
- Establishing and maintaining pricing, rebate, cost and margin controls to protect profitability and improve competitiveness
- Partnering with Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, Technical and Compliance teams to deliver effective launches, campaigns, availability and customer solutions
- Challenging supplier performance through structured reviews, clear KPIs, corrective actions and commercially focused governance
- Monitoring competitor activity, regulatory change, product innovation and customer trends to protect and improve category position
- Providing clear reporting on category performance, risks, opportunities and progress against agreed targets
On top of working for the UK’s leading integrated health and safety experts, you’ll also receive:
- A competitive starting salary plus bonus and a car allowance
- 32 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays
- Opportunity to purchase 5 additional days annual leave each calendar year (subject to qualifying salary)
- 2 fully paid Community Volunteering days every year
- An excellent pension (up to 8% Arco contribution) and x4 Life Assurance scheme
- A huge range of discounts to help with cost of living via Perkbox plus Employee Discount on Arco products
- Free, 24-hour access to our Employee Assistance Programme
- Health Cash Plan where we'll reimburse up to 100% of everyday healthcare costs
- Access to our Learning Management System, to support your personal and career development
- Long-term service awards – we’re proud to have employees who have worked for us for 40 years
The ideal Product & Procurement Manager will be/have:
- Strong commercial product, category or procurement experience within PPE, safety, industrial distribution or a comparable B2B environment
- Proven delivery of sales, margin, budget and supplier performance targets
- Demonstrable experience managing proprietary vendor relationships and own-label product development
- Experience running supplier tenders, negotiations, cost reviews and commercial award processes
- Strong understanding of product lifecycle, range architecture, pricing, rebates, margin management and promotional effectiveness
- Ability to manage supplier service performance, including availability, fulfilment, quality, responsiveness and innovation delivery
- Confident user of commercial data, with the ability to convert performance insight into direct action
- Sound knowledge of PPE standards, compliance requirements, customer applications and market dynamics
- Strong negotiation, influencing and stakeholder management capability
- Formal qualification in business, procurement, product management or supply chain preferred; equivalent experience accepted
- Comfortable operating at pace, managing competing priorities and holding suppliers accountable for measurable outcomes