Merchandising & Planning Manager
Freda Salvador
- Sausalito, CA
- $80,000-120,000 per year
- Permanent
- Full-time
Market and Trend Knowledge:
- Strong market and current trend knowledge.
- Competitive landscape expertise, utilizing information to support best line plans and buy plans for the business.
- Consistently convey trends and learnings to teams.
- Partner with IM leader and business units to create line plans aligned with top-down and bottoms-up plans.
- Participate in all preseason merchandising meetings, presenting trends, line plans, and influencing development based on data and analytics (scorecard).
- Apply systems to adoption and line assortment meetings, supporting business units to roll up buy plans and make recommendations for buys by channel.
- Manage weekly sales reporting and future season planning, based on learnings and pricing, in partnership with business units, leadership, and production teams.
- In-season/Post-season business opportunity identification, including WTD/MTD selling analysis, QTD/STD selling hindsights, WOS, ST rate, Turn, assortment updates, and learnings.
- Provide both qualitative and quantitative analysis at quarterly and seasonal hindsights and investment reviews, drawing insights to affect future product line architecture.
- Perform margin and cost analysis to ensure margin targets are achieved and highlight risks and variances.
- Drive weekly business discussions with channel owners to analyze the business, digging deeper into selling trends.
Sales Planning and Strategy:
- Develop and sustain a detailed sales plan from the ground up, while coordinating with overarching Open-to-Buy (OTB) strategies.
- Own OTB for all channels.
- Participate in monthly forecast reviews, managing the OTB, with IM leader.
- Responsible for receipts and flow for all channels.
- Manage class mix, class level performance, and buying; partner with IM leader on class strategy.
- Consistently review data to gather insights to adjust forecasting trends, closely monitor the business to ensure a healthy reorder process.
- Support future season inventory planning process with the team, using data analytics and clear line planning and OTB process.
- Oversee PO process with Production team.
- Own inventory/SKU set up to maintain product information integrity across channels.
- Channel allocation: support retail store inventory allocation and replenishment.
- Analytical and trend reporting on all aspects of the business, including climate, size, color, etc.
- Responsible for weekly reporting to manage business and communicate recommendations to leadership.
- Manage inventory markdown process, execution, and timed events.
- Ensure accurate product attribution to uphold data integrity.
- Create and maintain markdown cadence.
- 3+ years in Merchandising, buying / planning function, preferably e-commerce
- Bachelor's degree or higher
- Relevant inventory planning and merchandising experience
- Knowledge of Women’s accessory / apparel marketplace and consumer
- Understanding of product development, financials, and production
- Strong leadership skills and communication skills with cross-functional partners
- Fluency with merchandising and planning systems, business acumen, tools, and applications
- Demonstrated experience gathering and manipulating data to answer questions and solve problems
- Advanced Excel skills including the ability to work with extremely large data sets, Pivot Tables, v lookups, and logical formulas
- Strong organizational and time management skills; able to effectively manage multiple priorities
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Comfort with ambiguity and passion/excitement for building new tools and processes