What makes this a great opportunity?Suntory Global Spirits is a world leader in premium spirits with $5.5 billion in annual revenues and an ambition to become the World's Most Admired Premium Spirits Company. We have a strong vision and strategy, an incredible brand portfolio grounded in quality and craftsmanship, an unwavering commitment to sustainability and top talent across the organization. We are focused on driving value across key priorities including American whiskey, Japanese Spirits, Scotch, Tequila and Ready-to-Drink. Headquartered in New York City, Suntory Global Spirits is a subsidiary of Suntory Holdings, which is world renowned for delivering quality and excellence across a range of products and categories.
Role ResponsibilitiesPeople Leadership - Lead Suntory Global Spirits' Malaysia business through direct leadership of Commercial, Trade Marketing, and Brand Marketing teams, while influencing distributor commercial and functional teams.
- Build and foster a high-performing, inclusive, and accountable team culture aligned with Suntory Global Spirits' values and growth ambitions.
- Coach and develop team members and distributor partners to strengthen commercial capabilities and execution excellence.
- Drive strong alignment with distributor leadership on business priorities, resource allocation, performance expectations, and ways of working.
- Identify capability gaps and implement development plans across sales execution, key account management, activation, forecasting, reporting, and analytics.
- Act as the primary in-market representative for Suntory Global Spirits Malaysia, ensuring effective decision-making, governance, and stakeholder management.
Commercial Leadership - Develop and execute Malaysia's annual market, commercial, and brand plans to deliver sustainable NSV growth, profitability, and market share objectives.
- Own market P&L performance, including budget management, forecasting, A&P investment, and operating expenses.
- Lead joint business planning with the distributor and align commercial, brand, trade marketing, customer, and financial priorities.
- Drive execution excellence across distribution, visibility, pricing, promotions, activations, innovation launches, and route-to-market effectiveness.
- Establish a disciplined operating rhythm through regular business reviews, forecast reviews, KPI tracking, and governance meetings to optimize performance.
- Ensure compliance with company policies, legal requirements, responsible marketing standards, and commercial governance processes.
Market & Stakeholder Leadership - Represent Malaysia within Southeast Asia and APAC leadership forums, providing clear updates on performance, risks, opportunities, and growth plans.
- Lead local brand activation, trade marketing, and commercial execution to ensure alignment with regional strategies and global brand standards.
- Build strong relationships with distributor partners, key customers, wholesalers, trade partners, and industry stakeholders to drive business growth.
- Work closely with regional and global teams to enhance innovation, commercial excellence, analytics, capability building, and execution standards.
- Conduct regular market visits to assess distribution, visibility, pricing, promotional effectiveness, and overall execution quality.
- Support issue and crisis management activities, ensuring timely escalation, communication, and resolution.
QualificationsExperience and Knowledge - Significant senior commercial leadership experience, ideally in a country GM leadership, general management, or senior commercial role with full P&L responsibility.
- Proven experience leading a local commercial, brand and trade-marketing team while growing a business through an exclusive distributor, distributor-led or indirect route-to-market model. Experience in an own-RTM or hybrid model is an advantage.
- Strong understanding of the Malaysia market and the broader Southeast Asia commercial landscape.
- Experience managing integrated sales, marketing, trade marketing teams, , not only functional silos.
- Experience leading through influence, including effective engagement with distributor leadership and matrixed regional teams.
- Experience managing joint business planning, distributor governance, performance scorecards, commercial negotiations and execution management
- Strong track record of delivering ambitious growth in a challenging and competitive market environment.
- Demonstrated experience leading, coaching and developing cross-functional teams and building strong performance cultures.
- Experience managing budgets, commercial forecasts, and market P&L responsibility.
- Experience working closely with customers, distributors, wholesalers, on-trade, e-commerce and external partners to deliver business results.
- Demonstrated strategic thinking, business problem solving, and the ability to translate strategy into action.
Skills and Behaviours - Strong people leadership and coaching capability.
- Strong partner-management, influencing and negotiation capability, with the ability to build trust, challenge constructively and hold others accountable.
- Strong general management mindset, able to balance growth, margin, brand equity and culture in one coherent plan.
- Comfortable with end-to-end accountability and making clear investment trade-offs across brands, channels and customers.
- Ability to create an environment where people can perform at their best.
- Excellent financial and commercial acumen.
- Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills in a matrixed organization.
- Clear and compelling communication skills, both written and verbal.
- Ability to navigate complexity and drive alignment across distributor, regional and global stakeholders.
- Customer-focused, commercially aware, and action-oriented.
- High degree of agility, resilience, and adaptability.
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to quality.
- Ability to challenge the status quo and lead change effectively.
- Inclusive leadership style with the ability to engage, motivate, and inspire others.
- High integrity and sound judgement, with a strong commitment to compliance, responsible marketing and good governance.
Preferred - Experience in spirits, beverage, FMCG, or premium consumer goods.
- Experience managing distributor joint business planning and performance management with key customers, distributors and wholesalers..
- Experience working across Southeast Asia and/or other multi-market environments.
- Experience in market development and premium brand building in competitive, high-growth markets.
- Willingness and ability to travel regularly within Malaysia for distributor, customer and market visits
Job Segment: Compliance, Performance Management, Legal, Human Resources
