Merchandise Planner

About the position

The Merchandise Planner will be accountable to drive profitable sales & margin for their department. They will also be responsible for management of sales & inventory activities by maintaining open-to-buy plans, assortment plans, monitoring sales & inventory, and providing stock productivity analysis. They will create and analyze forecasts across the channels and provide robust reporting to all levels of the organization.

Responsibilities

• Work cross functionally with other departments within the organization in order to optimize buy plan, sku optimization, as well as time phased category plans.
• Maintaining OTB flow for current buying season and an extended 18 month strategic open to buy plan for future product seasons.
• Manage in-season inventory activities, forecasting to a roll forward projection, and making adjustments based on the agreed top-down plan.
• Support the markdown and closeout process.
• Create and update inventory productivity analysis including stock aging, pareto, velocity, flow optimization, and seasonal mix.
• Prepare for monthly open-to-buy review meetings with the Merchants.
• Review current position against the top-down plan; identify risks and opportunities for optimization.
• Provide analysis on an as needed basis including assortment analysis by distribution grade/cluster; productivity and profitability by category; markdown cadence optimization; stockouts and service levels, etc.
• Responsible for working with Merchant team to create buy targets by channel.
• Breaking the future plans to lower classification levels in order to improve forecast accuracy.
• Time phasing category plans in order to improve cash flow and deliver products just in time to maximize sales.
• Responsible for developing and providing standard weekly and monthly reports and evaluating performance versus agreed upon KPIs.

Requirements

• Experience retail merchandise planning, buying, demand and supply planning, footwear a plus.
• Knowledge of different business operating models - Retail, Franchise, Outlet, Ecommerce, Wholesale.
• Finance - Retail Merchandise Planning - Budgets, Forecasts, Sales, Margin, Margin %.
• Supply Chain - Merchandise metrics and Supply Chain logistics.
• Successful Retail Planning and Merchandising, Buying, Demand and Supply Planning experience.
• Experience in key distribution channels - wholesale, retail, and digital.
• Comprehensive understanding of overall business operations.
• Ability to analyze trends and use that information to effectively plan and forecast.
• Strong analytical and verbal skills.
• Decision making skills.
• Organizational skills to coordinate feedback from a variety of sources.
• Practical understanding of financial, range, space and demand planning processes.
• Practical understanding of trading and marketing planning processes.
• Experience in following tools Data warehouse/data mart query and report development tool Advance Microsoft Excel Planning Software (MID, Arthur, NSB/STS/MMS, I2, Retek, Evant, etc.