Route-to-Market & Channel Development Manager

Tokyo, Japan · Full-time · Manager 

Redesign how our products get to market across three countries — then prove the new model works before it scales.

BAT is a global multi-category consumer goods business. Our purpose is to create A Better Tomorrow™, with a vision to build a smokeless world — as at 31 December 2025, 34.1m consumers used our Smokeless Products, generating 18.2% of Group revenue. Selling several categories at once through the same stores is a genuinely different problem from selling one, and most route-to-market models in this region weren't built for it. Rebuilding them is your remit.

The role
You own how we reach retailers and consumers across North Asia: the service model our trade teams run, the channels we prioritise, and the capability of the people executing it. You design, pilot, evaluate and then scale — or kill. This is a role with real authority over standards across markets, and real accountability for whether execution in stores actually improves.

What you'll own

• The trade service model — how our teams cover, serve and grow each type of outlet, and how that evolves

• Route-to-market and channel strategy: where the growth is, what's structurally in the way, and the plan to fix it

• The performance measures for trade execution — defining them, governing them, and turning them into prioritised action rather than a dashboard

• Design and evaluation of channel pilots, and the decision on whether to scale them

• Retail data — the census, classification and quality standards that everything else depends on

• Capability building for commercial teams across markets: identifying the real gaps and running the programmes that close them

• Change management — getting three markets to adopt a new way of working, which is harder than designing it

What you'll bring

• Proven work on trade operations and on designing a trade service model — not just running one someone else designed

• Transformation experience: you've changed how a commercial organisation works and made it stick

• Strong analytical and problem-solving ability, and comfort with Power BI

• The influence to move stakeholders who don't report to you, across countries

• People leadership and a genuine interest in developing others

• Useful, not essential: trade activation experience

Qualifications

• 5+ years in trade marketing and distribution within consumer goods, plus experience in sales, route-to-market or channel development

• A university degree

• Native-level Japanese. Your deep knowledge of this market is the reason for the role — we provide structured English training on company time to support the regional part of it