Job opening
Director of Planning
Filed under Retail Apparel and Fashion
Full job description
Our client is looking for a strategic and analytically driven Director of Planning to lead end-to-end planning across a growing portfolio of direct-to-consumer brands. This role will oversee Open-to-Buy, demand forecasting, receipt planning, and inventory strategy across multiple brands and e-commerce channels.
Responsibilities
- Own the end-to-end Open-to-Buy process across multiple brands, categories, channels, and seasons, including monthly OTB budgets and reconciliation.
- Lead demand planning and develop accurate product forecasts using sales history, trend data, and business insights.
- Develop receipt flow plans aligned with OTB, warehouse capacity, inventory levels, and promotional calendars.
- Build and maintain promotional calendars, size curve models, and seasonal and annual merchandise financial plans.
- Produce weekly, monthly, and seasonal reporting on sales, margin, inventory, and OTB performance.
- Develop scenario models and what-if analyses to support decisions around receipt shifts, cancellations, and opportunistic buys.
- Set and manage inventory targets, including weeks of supply, turn goals, and markdown thresholds.
- Monitor inventory health and proactively identify opportunities to minimize excess and aged inventory while protecting in-season sales.
- Lead e-commerce inventory allocation, site-level availability, digital sell-through analysis, and online demand forecasting.
- Monitor e-commerce KPIs including sell-through velocity, return rates, and conversion-adjusted demand.
- Identify inventory risks and opportunities and provide actionable recommendations to senior leadership.
- Partner closely with buying, merchandising, e-commerce, marketing, finance, and executive leadership to align inventory, assortment, financial, and promotional strategies.
- Establish scalable planning processes, best practices, and analytical frameworks across the growing brand portfolio.
- Present planning performance, inventory strategies, and recommendations to senior leadership.
Requirements
- 10+ years of progressive experience in retail merchandise planning, inventory planning, or demand planning, including 4+ years in a senior or director-level role.
- Proven experience with OTB management, demand forecasting, receipt planning, and size curve development.
- Experience planning across multiple brands or business units with enterprise-level visibility.
- Extensive e-commerce planning experience, ideally within digitally native businesses.
- Expert-level proficiency in Microsoft Excel, including advanced financial modeling, pivot tables, XLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH, scenario analysis, and large-scale data manipulation.
- Strong financial acumen with the ability to connect planning decisions to margin, cash flow, and P&L outcomes.
- Exceptional analytical, organizational, and communication skills.
- Ability to translate complex data into executive-ready insights and influence cross-functional stakeholders.
Please submit your resume for consideration!
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