What you’ll do:

• Develop merchandise financial plans which optimize product category sales, financial, margin, and inventory goals.
• Lead the forecasting for carryover and new product launches and new store openings.
• Be the focal point for weekly sales reporting, developing tailored reporting for senior leadership and the merchandising, finance, supply chain, retail sales, and digital teams.
• Develop and deliver performance analysis across the business that measures achievement of sales, margin, and inventory plans.
• Manage the open to buy (OTB) process (part of the sales and operations planning process) that budgets for inventory purchases of both carryover and new products.
• Support the buy review process (where new product investments are agreed) with forecasting and analysis including halo and cannibalization estimates, required inventory investment, and margin.
• Be the go-to for ad-hoc and diagnostic analysis of sales, gross margin, and inventory performance, communicating insights, corrective actions, and recommendations.
• Provide analytical support to the merchandising team as they develop product assortment, pricing, life cycle, and discontinuation plans.
• Help develop systems and tools to facilitate the merchandising planning function.
• Lead and develop a small team of demand and merchandise planners.

What you bring to the team:

• Experience: 5 years of experience in a retail environment including time as a planner, buyer or retail business analyst.
• Demonstrated leadership experience, managing teams and working with executive leaders
• Experience in high growth retail environment with frequent new store openings
• Demonstrated retail experience and business acumen including forecasting, promotions, margin planning, selling and inventory productivity measures.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills including the ability to present complex material in an organized and compelling manner.
• Proven track record in assortment and inventory planning to help optimize retail stores for highest conversion rates
• Strategic thinker who recognizes opportunities and can recommend strategies by building business case and influence senior leaders to move to execution
• High level of conceptual creative ability. Strong product sense with proven experience in driving product assortments and partnering to lead investment strategies that drive business.
• Strong time management skills, attention to detail, problem solving, interpersonal and organizational skills – communication between functional groups is very critical.
• Advanced proficiency in Excel, and data / business intelligence tools.