Merchandise Planner

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Job description

As the Merchandise Planner you will be responsible for OTB planning and analysis, inventory management, and performance reporting for a D2C High Sku and high Category company. This role will be forecasting weekly and monthly reviewing turns. In addition, the Merchandise Planner will help drive the team's success by providing insight and analysis into detailed planning KPIs at a daily, weekly and monthly level. The right candidate will be detail oriented, analytical and work well in a team environment. This candidate MUST have direct to consumer and high SKU experience planning with a quick turn around supply chain providing flexibility and accurate pivots for the Buyers. They will work cross functionally with Buying daily focusing on up to 10 categories.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain annual, seasonal, and monthly merchandise plans for multiple product categories up to 3000 SKUS.
• Identify category releases according to sales trends from previous year
• Manage an OTB daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly analysis forecasting quick re orders and weeks of supply.
• Manage the financial success of the business by meeting sales goals and maintaining healthy inventory levels with monthly analysis.
• Identifying weeks of supply on hand.
• Recap and analyze actual sales results vs plan and forecast in-season sales and inventory on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis
• Quantify in-season risks and opportunities and make recommendations to buying team.
• Communicate monthly Open-to-Buy forecasts & supporting action plans to management and cross functional teams.
• Develop effective promotional strategies to optimize inventory productivity and maintain healthy turns
• Create category level quarterly hindsight reports to drive strategic assortment decisions for future investments
• Provide insights and recommendations for future seasons
• Prepare innovative ad-hoc financial analysis for management as needed
• Develop and maintain effective working relationships with cross functional team members
• Understand a fast fashion nature in a socially native environment heavily impacted by the

Required Skills:

• Bachelor's degree, business/finance degree preferred
• Minimum of 3 years of retail apparel planning and inventory management experience
• Solid understanding of financial measurements including: sales, gross margin, inventory turn, ST%, weeks of supply and how to impact them
• Expertise in retail math and OTB planning
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel
• Excellent analytical skills
• Strong problem solving skills
• Flexible and adaptive to changing priorities; ability to organize and prioritize workload to meet deadlines
• Ability to build and maintain productive relationships with peers and cross-functional teams
• Ability to work independently on simultaneous projects in a fast paced environment
• Ability to work under pressure in an environment of constant change and shifting priorities.
• Demonstrate strong listening, written and communication skills
• Excellent time-management and organizational skills