General Purpose:
Reporting to the DTC merchandising senior manager, the merchandise planner & allocator develops, reviews and inputs financial plans by channel, retail location and business unit (soft goods, hard goods, and bikes) and tie back to overall financial needs. He/She owns open to buy and collaborate with the ECOM and Retail team for the assortment/replenishment selection by channel and store. He/she manages from seasonal demand planning to weekly sales analysis and stock monitoring and replenishment still with the objective of meeting financial and merchandising goals. He/She helps to identify opportunities at a store level, online and offline. Duties include merchandising analysis, feedback collection from web merchants and in store staff, initial purchase order allocation, maintenance of warehouse back stock, managing transfers and reorders to ensure proper merchandise assortment by door, both existing and new, and maximize sales and optimizing inventory management.
Key responsibilities:
- Focus on maximizing profitability and Sell-Through while aligning with total company goals and expectations.
- Own open to buy process and sales forecast for NorAm ECOM (.com & Marketplaces) and Retail.
- Manage overall store inventory levels based on store capacity, attributes, seasonality and selling curves. Monitor flow of initial assortments as well as reorders to stores by classification, delivery/group and by style whenever necessary.
- Identify and communicate sales risks/opportunities and stock liabilities by door on a regular basis. Ensure that buy quantities and stock levels meet current sales trends and maximize readiness for key selling time periods.
- Manage purchase orders from initial allocation through end-of-life cycle of merchandise in tight collaboration with local wholesale team, including replenishment and consolidation of goods to other stores or channels.
- Manage tracking of timely delivery of merchandise to the ECOM merchandisers and retail stores and communicates with them accordingly.
- Partner with the DTC team to recap business at door level and create reports on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis to allow for thorough analysis of the business.
- Identify and highlight any supply chain issue that may affect the business.
- Recommend changes and/or enhancements to the current procedures and systems for the allocation and replenishment functions.
- Actively participating in collection validation for all business units Apparel, Winter Sport Equipment and Bikes.
Qualifications/Experience:
- Relevant university degree (Bachelor/Master or equivalent qualification).
- +5 years progressive experience in financial planning, merchandising planning preferably in structured Direct to Consumer environments, ideally across both ECOM and Retail.
- Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office products, above all Excel is a must have.
- Strong numerical and analytical skills as well as retail math knowledge, including elements of mark up, margin, open to buy, merchandising KPI.
- Strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
- Fluent in English. French and other languages will be a plus.
- Experience in retail outdoor and/or passion and knowledge for hard goods and technical products would be a plus.
- Self motivated, flexible, and able to manage large volumes of work independently.
- Positive forward-looking mindset and team spirit.