Senior Manager, Supplier Management

About Planning & Allocation

The Physical Retail Planning & Allocation team creates a differentiated in-store experience by ensuring customers can find the right products, in the right stores, at the right time. We partner across Merchandising, Curated Merchandising/Category Management, Supplier Inventory Management (SIM), Operations, Visual Presentation, and Store teams to connect assortment strategy with inventory availability and store execution.

This role will focus on Frequency departments, with primary ownership of Textile and Decor categories.

About the Role

We are seeking a strategic and analytically rigorous Senior Planner to own inventory strategy for Textile and Decor across our retail stores. This person will translate assortment and category strategies into executable inventory plans, identify and close availability gaps, and establish scalable ways of working across Planning & Allocation and partner teams.

The Senior Planner will serve as a senior thought partner to CM and Merchants on assortment and supplier strategy, work closely with SIM to secure inventory and resolve supply constraints, and build feedback loops with Store teams to incorporate customer and frontline insights into planning decisions.

This is an L4 role. The ideal candidate can define ambiguous problems, make tradeoffs across competing priorities, influence senior partners, and turn inventory challenges into clear strategies and measurable outcomes.

What You’ll Do

Own category inventory strategy

• Develop end-to-end inventory strategies for Textile and Decor across stores, balancing in-stock performance, assortment productivity, turns, margin, working capital, and customer experience.

• Translate merchant and CM assortment visions into forecasts, stocking strategies, store-level inventory requirements, allocation principles, and replenishment approaches.

• Define differentiated strategies for hero, core, seasonal, newness, display-driven, and emerging items.

• Establish decision criteria for when to buy, replenish, allocate, substitute, swap, or exit products.

• Connect inventory recommendations to sales, margin, open-to-buy, and broader retail financial goals.

Define the approach to securing store inventory

• Establish a scalable operating model with clear ownership, decision rights, supplier commitments, escalation paths, milestones, and performance measures.

• Identify root causes of inventory gaps, including supplier capacity, forecast accuracy, lead times, MOQs, case packs, transportation, network availability, and assortment strategy.

• Define near-term mitigation levers, including prioritization, reallocations, alternate fulfillment, substitutions, assortment changes, expedited supply, and targeted supplier commitments.

• Develop long-term solutions, such as supplier stocking strategies, improved forecasting, assortment simplification, alternate sourcing, packaging changes, and lead-time reductions.

• Create a repeatable process to identify risks early, quantify customer and financial impact, align on actions, and track resolution while balancing network-wide needs with local demand, store capacity, presentation, and operational constraints.

Lead cross-functional category strategy

• Serve as the P&A subject-matter expert for Textile and Decor, bringing inventory, customer, and store perspectives to assortment and supplier decisions.

• Partner with CM, Merchants, SIM, Store Operations, and Visual Presentation on seasonal planning, assortment reviews, launches, department refreshes, supplier commitments, stocking buys, replenishment, and in-season optimization.

• Combine sales, conversion, in-stock, lost sales, sell-through, inventory age, forecast accuracy, and replenishment data with customer and frontline feedback to identify gaps and opportunities.

• Translate insights into changes to assortment, inventory targets, supplier strategy, or planning processes; prioritize products with strong customer potential and address avoidable supply risk.

• Lead structured supplier and cross-functional reviews that clarify the problem, impact, recommendation, owner, timing, and contingency plan.

• Build trusted partnerships, hold stakeholders accountable, and communicate clear recommendations and tradeoffs to senior leaders.

Lead in-season performance and improvement

• Monitor category and item performance across stores and the broader inventory network, identifying risks and opportunities.

• Lead actions including reallocations, flow and replenishment adjustments, assortment swaps, and exit strategies.

• Establish reporting, business reviews, tools, and operating rhythms that improve visibility, accountability, and speed of resolution.

• Use automation and emerging technologies to reduce manual work and improve decision quality.

• Create playbooks and decision frameworks that enable greater planner and allocator autonomy.

• Coach peers and junior team members; people management may be included based on team structure.

Success in This Role Looks Like

• Improved in-stock performance and reduced lost sales across Textile and Decor, especially for priority and high-velocity items.

• A clear, scalable approach for securing store inventory, with defined decision rights, supplier commitments, escalation paths, and measures of success.

• Earlier identification and resolution of inventory risks through stronger forecasting, supplier alignment, and operating rhythms.

• Healthier inventory productivity, including improved sell-through, turns, inventory age, and reduced avoidable excess.

• Stronger alignment across CM, Merchants, SIM, P&A, Store Operations, and Visual Presentation.

• Scalable tools and standards that improve the effectiveness of the broader P&A team.

What You’ll Need

• 6–10+ years of experience in retail planning, inventory management, allocation, merchandising, supplier management, supply chain, or a related analytical field; home, specialty retail, textiles, or decor experience is preferred.

• Knowledge of forecasting, replenishment, allocation, in-stock, sell-through, inventory turns, weeks of supply, lead times, safety stock, and working capital.

• Proven ability to diagnose complex problems, identify root causes, and design both immediate mitigations and durable solutions.

• Strong analytical and financial acumen, including the ability to define data needs, navigate ambiguity, and connect recommendations to business outcomes.

• Exceptional cross-functional influence and communication skills, with the ability to challenge constructively and drive accountability without formal authority.

• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, evolving environment and moving between strategic thinking and detailed execution while making timely decisions with imperfect information.

• Experience with Excel or Google Sheets and BI or planning tools; SQL, a related bachelor’s degree, and thoughtful use of emerging AI tools are pluses.