Merchandise Planner

2 years exp

**Roles & Responsibilities**

The Merchandise Planner is a highly strategic and analytic role for WSI’s Global Inventory Management team. The responsibility will include the planning and purchasing for our company-owned stores and websites. This position will develop and execute demand forecasting and inventory management; ensuring the right balance of assortment investments and accurate inventory flow in optimizing inventory, maximizing sales and profitability while driving business initiatives in partnership with cross-functional teams towards meeting divisional financial targets and brand strategies.

Reports to Director/ Manager, Inventory Management.

**Pre-Season**:

- Partner with the merchant team to develop annual and seasonal financial plans that support the brand strategies.
- Partner with merchants to establish seasonal assortment roll-up plans, both top-down and at SKU level and ensure the right balance of inventory optimization on newness and core business vs plan sales and merchandising strategies.
- Analyze business performance, SKU productivity, trends and provide hind sights to identify opportunities and drive pre-season strategy and assortment plans.
- Partner with the Merchant team to resolve SKU issues to ensure they do not negatively impact brand performance.
- Ensure SKU plans are completed and passed to achieve PO placement deadlines and address any issues that impede this goal for core and seasonal products.
- Manage successful placement and accurate tracking of brand Global purchase orders.

**In-Season**:

- Review current business and partner with merchant team to take appropriate actions to maximize sales, margin, and inventory productivity (daily, weekly, monthly) at all levels.
- Partner with the merchant team to develop 12 monthly rolling financial forecasts that support the brand strategy and maximize sales and margin within inventory budgets.
- Analyze inventory levels and ensure inventory levels support brand strategy, minimize stock-outs and manage inventory flow to ensure appropriate in-stock rates are achieved for core product and seasonal launches.
- Analyze and build promotional plans in partnership with the merchant team to update, plan exit strategies, and accurately forecast monthly promotional plans that support sales, margin, and inventory goals achievement.
- Manage seasonal promotional plans in Relex planning tool and plan SKU level demand forecast and re-order plans to maximize SKU productivity and achieve inventory optimization.
- Manage placement and tracking of brand Global purchase orders in collaboration with the order management team and identify solutions to resolve fall out.
- Proactively and collaboratively address any shortcomings or opportunities to improve tools and processes.
- Collaborate with the allocation team on allocation parameters and flow quantities to support promotional activity, high-seasonal holidays, markdown replenishment, and in-store events.
- Collaborate with order Management, supply chain, logistics, and distribution functions to identify and resolve supply chain and shipment timeline issues

**Ongoing**:

- Provide analytical reporting.
- Proactively evaluate reports, tools, and process flow to assess and give recommendations where improvements can be made.
- Build and maintain strong cross-functional collaboration as an integral partner across merchandising, retail, marketing, visual, allocation, sourcing, logistics, and the distribution centers to achieve goals.
- Actively participate in creating and maintaining a positive team environment.
- Support in training and development of new team members.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS & COMPETENCIES:

- A Diploma/Degree with a minimum of 2-5 years experience in a role with analytical/strategic responsibilities - Retail industry experience is a plus.
- Possess Strong technical, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
- Proficiency in Advanced Microsoft Excel (eg. Formulas, Pivot tables, V-Lookup, etc) is a must
- Meticulous and detail-oriented with strong follow-through.
- Strong organizational skills & ability to multi-task.
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.
- A good team player with a positive working attitude.
- Able to deliver results by influencing internal and external partners.
- Have good interpersonal, written, and verbal communication, listening, and presentation skills to drive tasks to completion.
- International experience preferred.

For more than 50 years Williams-Sonoma Inc have been focused on enhancing our customers' lives at home. Along the way we've learned a lot about enhancing our own lives at work. We are a results-oriented team with people first as our mantra. This means that we strive to deliver a workplace experience where the quality of our engagement with fellow associates, business partners and customers matches the quality of the products and services we bring to the marketplace. Today we are a multi-channel, global