Planner, Merchandise

The Merchandise Planner is a highly analytical, cross-functional role responsible for developing and executing inventory strategies that optimize availability, investment, and productivity across the business. This position ensures inventory levels support baseline and promotional demand, corporate initiatives, and financial objectives, while delivering strong in-stocks, healthy turns, and controlled risk. Partnering closely with Merchandising, Private Brand, Supply Chain, Analytics, and vendor teams, the Merchandise Planner translates demand signals and financial targets into actionable, data-driven plans that balance opportunity with investment. This role serves as a critical link between merchant strategy and operational execution and requires a detail-oriented, logical, and results-driven thinker who can model scenarios, influence partners, and drive disciplined inventory decisions.

Essential Functions:

• Responsible for the management of the Open to Buy for area of scope, appropriately allocating spend to drive sales and customer growth.
• Own SKU and location level demand forecasting using historical sales, trend analysis, seasonality.
• Review and maintain inventory models in Relex to optimize weeks of supply, safety stock, and replenishment parameters.
• Analyze forecast accuracy, bias, and error; continuously refine assumptions and inputs.
• Develop inventory scenarios to support financial planning, growth strategies, and risk mitigation.
• Translate sales, margin, and receipt plans into executable inventory strategies.
• Perform root-cause analysis on in-stock issues, excess, and obsolescence.
• Own receipts forecasts for accurate replenishment and quickly adjust to support trends, priorities, and business needs.
• Effectively balance owned brands vs. third party inventory levels based on promotional activity, availability, cost opportunity, and category strategies.
• Closely collaborate with cross-functional partners on new item launches, category refreshes, and end to end lifecycle management.
• Responsible for purchase order issuance and management

In Season Management:

• Monitor daily and weekly KPIs including in-stock %, weeks of supply, inventory turns, sell-through, and aging.
• Identify risks and opportunities early through exception-based reporting.
• Recommend data backed actions such as rebalancing, flow optimization, markdown timing, or receipt adjustments.
• Partner with Commercialization team to manage lead times, vendor performance, and inventory flow constraints 

Cross Functional Partnership:

• Collaborate with leadership to align inventory plans with sales, margin forecasts, and overall OTB metrics.
• Support Private Brand processes with clear analytics, assumptions, and scenario modeling.
• Partner with Merchandising to influence assortment, depth, and lifecycle decisions using data insights.
• Present clear, concise insights to leadership, translating complex data into actionable recommendations.

Technology & Systems:

• Leverage Relex (planning system), BI tools, and data platforms to drive insight and efficiency.
• Identify opportunities to automate reporting, forecasting inputs, and decision workflows.
• Partner with Relex Super User and IT teams to enhance data quality, forecasting logic, and model performance.
• Support adoption of advanced analytics, predictive models, and machine learning capabilities.

Skill and Ability:                                         

• Establish disciplined planning routines, KPIs, and performance tracking.
• Influence without authority through credibility, insight, and data-driven recommendations.
• 4–6+ years of inventory, merchandise, or supply chain planning experience.
• Advanced analytical skills with strong statistical and quantitative reasoning.
• Expert-level Excel skills; experience with forecasting and inventory planning systems, preferably Relex.
• Experience working with large data sets and BI tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, SQL).
• Strong business acumen with the ability to connect data to financial outcomes.
• Excellent communication skills
• Bachelor’s degree in finance, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Supply Chain Management, or equivalent combination of intellectual instruction and work experience.

Equal Opportunity Policy

The Vitamin Shoppe is an equal opportunity employer. We respect diversity and accordingly are an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, sex, gender, gender identity or expression (including transgender status), sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, physical or mental disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.  Our management is dedicated to ensuring the fulfillment of this policy with respect to hiring, placement, promotion, transfer, demotion, layoff, separation, recruitment, pay and other forms of compensation, access to facilities and programs, training and general treatment during employment.

We firmly believe that every Health Enthusiast has the right to be treated with dignity and respect. Our goal is to maintain a satisfied and productive team of Health Enthusiasts. The keys to reaching that goal are effective leadership, equal application of fair human resources policies, competitive wages and benefits, and close attention to all health enthusiast matters. The Vitamin Shoppe is committed to the principle of fair and impartial treatment of our Health Enthusiasts.

Health Enthusiasts with questions or concerns about equal employment opportunities in the workplace are encouraged to bring these issues to the attention of their Human Resources representative.  We will not allow any form of retaliation against Health Enthusiasts who raise issues of perceived discrimination in good faith.  To ensure our workplace is free of artificial barriers, violation of this policy may result in disciplinary action, up to and including discharge.