Demand Planner

PetSmart - Phoenix, AZ

Full-time - Mid Level

Remote - Phoenix, AZ

5,001-10,000 employees

Sporting Goods, Hobby, Musical Instrument, Book, and Miscellaneous Retailers

About the position

As a Demand Planner at PetSmart, you will play a pivotal role in the Merchandise Planning and Allocation (MP&A) team, which is essential for translating the organization's product visions into reality for consumers. Your responsibilities will encompass a wide range of activities including sales and margin forecasts, promotional performance analysis, inventory management, and maintaining strong vendor relationships. This position is critical in ensuring that the right inventory quantities are available at all distribution centers to meet store sales demands and merchandising objectives. You will be responsible for managing inventory from the point of purchase order creation to the point of sale, ensuring that instocks are maintained and presentation minimum requirements are met across all stores. In this role, you will collaborate closely with various departments including buying, planning, store operations, and supply chain to achieve sales, margin, and inventory goals. Your ability to communicate effectively with the cross-functional team and the Demand Planning manager will be crucial for making timely and informed business decisions. You will also be responsible for establishing and maintaining solid vendor relations, managing vendor order projections, and serving as the key contact for vendors and distribution centers to ensure smooth order flow and resolve any purchase order issues. A successful Demand Planner will balance strong execution of fundamental job responsibilities with strategic thinking. You will need to identify opportunities for improvement, articulate these opportunities clearly, and develop actionable strategies to address them. Your performance will be measured against key inventory management metrics, and you will be expected to lead special projects that drive growth opportunities while optimizing processes and systems for accuracy and efficiency.

Responsibilities

• Achieves Sales, Margin, Inventory Turnover, and other KPIs as outlined in Plan and Forecast
• Develop overall division strategy vision, policies, resources, and execution plans to align to the corporate strategy
• Participates in the seasonal, annual, and long-range strategic and financial planning across a wide array of vendor (direct and external), customer, and merchandising segments
• Use consumer insights and data combined with a structured test and learn approach to maximize growth opportunities
• Leads, executes and measure performance against the business planning and product creation calendars to drive timely and informed decision making
• Supports the VP & Director to present within various strategic meetings for the division (i.e. Open-To-Buy, Vendor, QBR, and other meetings)
• Owns the end-to-end management of demand planning and allocation optimization, including in-stock and service levels for funded items and promotional product
• Set targets and achieves plans for inventory and space productivity required to support the sales, gross margin and in-stock plans
• Maintain high levels of promotional product availability during promotional periods while minimizing ad residue
• Optimize end-caps, drive aisle, and in-line story telling and integration consistent with consumer shopping patterns
• Ensure department and sku level planning reflects unique store and merchandise assortments, including localization
• Leads the development and execution of demand planning, including information sharing and problem solving with vendors around purchase orders, capacities, forecasting, and network inventory flow and optimization
• Responsible for the creation, accuracy, communication and management of vendor demand plans
• Responsible for management and maintenance of order policy and all business metrics within
• Actively create and lead special projects that drive growth opportunities
• Integrate processes and systems to optimize accuracy, efficiency, inventory productivity, space utilization, and margin optimization
• Coordinates the timely response to questions from the stores and management regarding product level availability

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree from a 4 year college or university
• 2+ years inventory demand planning experience
• Intermediate to advanced knowledge of Excel, Microstrategy, Outlook, SAP and Relex Replenishment System

Benefits

• Pet friendly environment, bring your pets to work!
• On-site Dog Park
• “Top Dog” gym with equipment, fitness classes, massage therapists and personal trainers
• “Sit & Stay” Café serving fresh breakfast and lunch options
• On-site coffee bar
• “Lil' Paws” learning center and onsite daycare facility (associate paid)
• Volunteer events with PetSmart Charities