Merchandise Planner 2

Senior Assortment Planner

Who You'll Work With:

• You will report to the North America Value Stores (NA NVS) planning manager and work hand-in-hand with the Merchandising buyers and with a variety of dedicated cross-functional partners focused on develop strategies to meet financial and inventory goals.

Who We Are Looking For:

• Working in Direct business will be rewarding, it'll be challenging, and it'll most definitely not be just another job. We are looking for a Sr. Assortment Planner, North America for our Client Factory Stores team. You'll be an ambassador of the Client brand - everything we stand for: drive, determination, the unyielding commitment to excellence. These all will be a part of your everyday experience. We're committed to making every consumer's experience a rewarding one, and as a member of our Client Stores team, your contributions will be a big part of our success.

Desired Candidate Profile:

• Minimum required years of experience: 3-5 years of planning experience
• Education requirements: Bachelors required

Must have skills:

• Has merchandise planning experience in retail environment
• Analytical
• Good at relationship building
• Comfortable with planning systems

Nice to have skills:

• Interest in apparel, love client
• Robust experience in adjacent areas helpful

Software/technical requirements:

• Strong Excel, affinity to learn new software

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in business or related field. Will accept any suitable combination of education, experience and training
• 3-5 years of relevant professional experience
• Microsoft Excel at high-intermediate to advanced level
• Ability to independently drive toward a clear outcome with an unclear path
• Natural tendency to organize information coming from various sources and owners and shape clean processes to drive repeatable, sustainable outcomes
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with demonstrated ability to curate and share out actionable insights from multiple data sources

Highly Preferred:

• Experience working in a retail environment
• Proven track record in retail planning, merchandising, inventory management or related operational disciplines
• Intermediate data manipulation and visualization skills (i.e. Excel, SQL, Snowflake, Tableau, PowerBI)
• Experience communicating to executive and a variety of non-technical audiences

What You'll Work On:

• In this role you'll establish clear stock and sales plans that tell a story for the season and help merchandising to create a line grounded in profitability and consumer centric offering. This will include collaborating with the merchandising and business units to develop and communicate a comprehensive strategy that aligns future financial plans and product opportunities. You'll create pre-season style plans that support the ultimate goal of Client Direct. You'll recap and analyze the business against the financial plan, and forecast in-season sales and inventories on a weekly/monthly/quarterly basis. In addition, you'll develop monthly forecasts of sales and inventory for all basic and fashion styles and will develop strategies to meet department financial goals and own open to buy forecasts.
• This role will include presenting financial plans, forecasts and strategies in key meetings. You'll proactively report on the health of the business and facilitate smart business decisions, communicate financial results, forecasts, and action plans to managers and cross-functional team members on a weekly basis. You'll collaborate with peers to ensure consistency of information, share best practices and develop systems knowledge. In addition, you'll participate in a team structure that facilitates and maximizes individual and team performance, supporting and fostering an open and inclusive environment that embraces diversity, encourages accountability, and drives toward results.

Key Accountabilities:

• Support product forecasting & pricing processes by managing reporting tools, analyzing data, & providing actionable insights
• Report on forecast variance weekly
• Construct and maintain reporting tools for use across the planning team
• Monitor price positioning across the marketplace and across the product portfolio, taking actions to adjust in accordance with overall pricing strategy
• Support monthly and seasonal inventory management activities
• Actively manage product lifecycles across seasons through close-out process and aging inventory