Merchandise Planning Job Description
Merchandise Planning Duties & Responsibilities
To write an effective merchandise planning job description, begin by listing detailed duties, responsibilities and expectations. We have included merchandise planning job description templates that you can modify and use.
Sample responsibilities for this position include:
Merchandise Planning Qualifications
Qualifications for a job description may include education, certification, and experience.
Education for Merchandise Planning
Typically a job would require a certain level of education.
Employers hiring for the merchandise planning job most commonly would prefer for their future employee to have a relevant degree such as Bachelor's and Collage Degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Education, MBA, Business/Administration, Merchandising, Accounting, Math, Marketing
Skills for Merchandise Planning
Desired skills for merchandise planning include:
Desired experience for merchandise planning includes:
Merchandise Planning Examples
Merchandise Planning Job Description
- Managing direct reports personally executing the planning for one business unit
- Collaborate with Global Merchants to manage the development of seasonal sub-category productivity plans and targets (assortment architecture) for assigned product categories
- Lead and facilitate major seasonal cross-functional integration points with both regional and global teams to ensure investment objectives are aligned
- Minimum 5-6 years of experience in merchandise planning or buying
- Working with our database system to capture information and compile info
- Assist department in prepping for meetings
- Collaborate closely with the Vice President and Directors of Planning the buying team
- Inspire the team to share in the vision of company/department goals
- Develop direct reports and build strong succession plans
- Ensure future success of the Planning team through developing career path and succession planning mentoring and training programs
- Spirit of initiative, confidentiality
- Must be a junior or senior student pursuing a degree in field related to area of internship
- Minimum of 5 to 7 years merchandise planning experience required in the apparel industry
- Planning Operations Coordinator
- Assistant Planner
- Associate Planner
Merchandise Planning Job Description
- Analyze historical and current sales trend data, anticipating upcoming trends to identify risks and opportunities by location, department, style and size
- Develops and leads complex cross-functional strategies to address and develop recommendations for major opportunities and anticipates challenges
- Provide planning team with efficient administrative support, including but not limited to, reporting needs in support of business analytics in preparation for weekly team business meetings
- Partner with the VP of Planning and Director to develop and enhance planning processes and functions needed to run the business more efficiently and effectively, analyze the business in order to identify risks and opportunities for further growth
- Clearly communicate to Planning and Buying teams the financial objectives, action plans, opportunities, learnings and liabilities of Designer/Private Label/OW/Lounge/Sportswear/Denim/Jewelry/Accessories/Footwear/Bags in order to enable strategic decision making by channel
- Global Assortment Planning/Buys
- Global Sales Trend Analytics
- Establish financial targets at division, category, and season code levels for merchandise buy periods
- Analyzes sell-in, sell-thru, gross margin, inventory turn, and other relevant metrics
- Line Planning at Style/Color level with Merchant
- Working Experience with leading industry packages related to Merchandising Planning
- Degree in Finance, Economics or Supply Chain Business
- Fluency in English and Italian (both spoken and written)
- Planner
- Planning Manager
- Planning Director
Merchandise Planning Job Description
- Work with direct reports on their personal and professional development
- Work with Planner to understand connected math and how changes impact the margin
- Be able to track and analyze promotional sales results
- Recommend pricing and promotional strategies that optimize margin and exit strategies
- Provide analysis related to driving business goals (hindsight, channel results, attribute, etc)
- Partner with Planner to identify and react to opportunities to increase sales, improve margin and optimize inventories
- Develop action-oriented reporting to assist team’s decision-making capabilities
- Assisting in developing seasonal menus and pricing/margin strategies by Brand that maximize profitability, and that effectively and accurately guide all Brand teams
- Working in close collaboration with Design and PD with costing and gross margin accountability
- Helping manage SRS development approval process in partnership with PD and Production
- VP Planning
- SVP Planning
- Proven ability to lead multi-functional stakeholders
- Procurement practices, methods and procedures developing and managing
- Ability to assess numbers
- Ability to work with database system
Merchandise Planning Job Description
- Creating, editing and managing Line-sheets for Market (4 times a year)
- Helping to develop financial framework for the line
- Supporting global line plan development to achieve a balanced assortment across key dimensions by brand, by category, by class, by color, by body, including price point, fashion/basic, , to ensure focus and brand integrity
- Work with planners to communicate departmental strategies weekly recaps to present key financial analysis and recommendations to Senior Leadership
- Oversees team(s) project assignments and deliverables
- Reviews reports and metrics and identifies opportunities to optimize pricing and promotional plans
- Lead internal merchandise planning cross functional teams
- Lead and manage planning team-provide training and career development
- Learn the Sales and Product Planning functions through the supervision of Planning Staff
- Analyze sales trends and be aware of inventory levels so as to maximize sales
- Finance and accounting principles - able to communicate financial plans and results from a merchandise perspective
- 10-15 years of related work experience in Merchandising, Planning and Allocation, with a minimum of 10 years management experience
- Experience working in a high volume, fast paced, multi-channel retail environment
- Strong analytical skills and strategic thinking – able to take effectively develop strategy using an analytical approach to develop and refine
- Proven track record for driving the business
- Strong leadership skills focused on developing a collaborative team environment ability to work across the organization, lead cross-functional teams, and influence without direct authority
Merchandise Planning Job Description
- Assist in the preparation of inventory and sales reports and in-depth analysis of major events for management review
- Learn how to analyze the product life cycle by closely monitoring sales history, pricing, decisions and retail trends
- Develop analytical tools, reporting to monitor & manage both system and user performance for Planning application
- Develop and Administer test plans and scripts for the new Merchandise Planning application, upgrades and interfaces with other applications on Supply Chain projects
- Manage Merchandise Planning maintenance calendar initiatives and business strategies to maintain system parameter settings to insure they are set within guidelines
- Work with Finance and Merchandising to enable financial planning
- Provide user support and training for NAC/NAS&O IM teams Merchandise Planning application and business processes
- Associate Development both personal and within the IM Team
- To produce reports and analysis to measure Online Stores performances
- To support the team in planning and controlling of Sales budget
- Courageous leadership style – willing and able to take calculated risks to push to future state
- Be assigned to a specific buying group and participate as a member of the team
- Attend buy meetings with vendors and our buying teams to get an up-close view of the retail fashion industry that you won’t find in a classroom
- Attend merchant classes so you can contribute in the buying office
- Get behind-the-scenes tours of various support and eCommerce centers
- Work on an independent impact project to present to the buying and leadership teams