Senior Manager Category, Brand Projects SEA (Singapore / Vietnam)

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization

As Senior Manager Category, Brand Projects, you will lead cross-functional strategic initiatives that unlock speed, scale, and commercial impact across Southeast Asia. Operating horizontally across Category, GTM, MOPS, Brand, and Supply Chain, this role will drive priority transformation projects, scalable concept development, and nearshoring initiatives that strengthen market responsiveness, simplify ways of working, and improve business outcomes across the region.

Key Responsibilities

Category Strategy & Concept Development

• Lead priority cross-functional projects from concept to execution, ensuring clear governance, milestones, accountability, and delivery against business objectives.


• Act as PMO for large-scale brand initiatives, tracking progress, identifying risks, and driving cross-functional alignment.


• Own project playbooks, governance routines, and reporting frameworks for horizontal initiatives.


• Drive execution discipline and escalation management across strategic programs.


• Ensure horizontal concepts support both brand ambition and commercial performance.

Horizontal Concepts & Portfolio Initiatives

• Define scalable cross-category concepts, frameworks, and portfolio opportunities that can be leveraged across SEA markets.


• Identify simplification, rationalization, and growth opportunities that reduce complexity and improve commercial productivity.


• Translate strategic intent into clear frameworks that enable category and GTM teams to execute consistently.


• Drive alignment on consumer‑led thinking, ensuring consistent application across categories and markets.


• Partner with Category teams to ensure clear roles of product within the broader adidas portfolio.


• Support key marketplace moments by ensuring horizontal concepts are reflected in seasonal line‑ups.


• Balance global consistency with local relevance, enabling markets to flex within defined frameworks.

Cross‑Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with Category Management, Brand Analytics GTM, MOPS, Product, Demand Planning, Supply Chain and Finance teams.


• Act as a connector between Emerging Markets strategy and regional/market needs, translating priorities both ways.


• Support SEA countries and GTM teams with frameworks and tools to enable consistent execution.


• Own and drive brand projects

Commercial & Marketplace Impact

• Drive improved assortment productivity, clarity, and scalability across channels and markets.


• Support key marketplace moments by ensuring horizontal concepts are reflected in seasonal line‑ups.


• Balance global consistency with local relevance, enabling markets to flex within defined frameworks.


• Analyse cross‑category performance to identify structural opportunities and risks.

Nearshoring

• Lead SEA nearshoring and local production initiatives, connecting sourcing, creation centres, category planning, GTM, and supply chain teams.


• Support the development and execution of the Southeast Asia nearshoring strategy, aligned with Global speed and agility priorities, in collaboration with Emerging Markets.


• Identify categories, franchises, and price points best suited for nearshored or fast‑response production models.


• Work with regional and global stakeholders to translate strategic intent into actionable nearshoring use cases.


• Ensure nearshoring initiatives deliver against speed, service, cost, and inventory objectives.


• Contribute to the development of playbooks, frameworks, and KPIs to standardize nearshoring execution.

Behaviors

• Act as a subject‑matter expert for horizontal category thinking within adidas.


• Drive change by challenging category silos and encouraging portfolio‑first thinking.


• Act as the PMO of large scale brand projects


• Strategic, systems‑oriented thinker with a portfolio mindset.


• Confident influencer with strong stakeholder management skills.


• Curious, improvement‑driven, and comfortable operating in ambiguity.

Key Relationships

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  Internal: Global & Regional Category Management, GTM, MOPS, Product, Brand, Demand Planning, Finance, Markets, local creation centres and factories/LOs.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

Professional Experience

• 8–12 years of experience in Category Management, Merchandising, or Commercial roles, ideally within a global consumer or sportswear brand.


• Proven experience working on cross‑category, portfolio, or horizontal initiatives.


• Experience operating in a regional or global matrix organization.

Functional Skills

• Strong understanding of category strategy, franchise management, and assortment architecture. Local production / Creation Centre a plus.


• Excellent analytical skills with the ability to synthesize complexity into clear direction.


• Strong commercial acumen and understanding of retail and DTC dynamics.


• Comfortable working within seasonal GTM frameworks.