Mud Pie is seeking a strategic, collaborative, and business-minded Chief Merchanting Officer to join our team at our Atlanta-area corporate headquarters. This newly created leadership role will be responsible for driving a disciplined, customer-focused merchandising strategy that improves SKU productivity, inventory turns, margin performance, category growth, and cross-channel assortment alignment.
Chief Merchandising Officer will work hand-in-hand with Finance, Marketing, Sales, and Product Development to help shape product strategy, optimize assortments, drive category performance, and ensure alignment between creative vision and business objectives. This leader will play a critical role in balancing innovation, customer needs, margin goals, assortment planning, buying, inventory productivity, category management, pricing strategy, visual merchandising, and seasonal execution across wholesale, ecommerce, and marketplaces.
This is a highly visible opportunity for a strategic merchant who thrives in fast-paced, evolving environments and enjoys building structure, influencing across teams, and driving meaningful impact within a leading and growing wholesale and consumer brand.
Merchandising Strategy & Assortment Planning:- Lead enterprise merchandising strategy across wholesale, DTC, ecommerce, and marketplaces channels
- Develop seasonal assortment architecture by category, channel, customer, and price point
- Drive SKU rationalization, assortment productivity, and category growth strategies
- Build and manage category line plans, breadth/depth strategies, and inventory flow
- Partner with Product Development leadership to align assortment strategy with seasonal product direction and business priorities
- Establish evergreen, replenishment, and seasonal product strategies where appropriate
- Analyze customer, sales, and inventory data to identify whitespace and growth opportunities
- Monitor competitive landscape, customer trends, and market opportunities to inform merchandising decisions
Inventory, Pricing & Financial Management: - Own merchandising KPIs including sales, gross margin, sell-through, inventory turn, weeks of supply, and SKU productivity
- Partner with Operations, Finance, Product Development, and Supply Chain teams to optimize inventory investments and flow timing
- Drive pricing, markdown, and promotional strategies that balance margin and inventory productivity
- Lead in-season business analysis and reforecasting processes
- Improve merchandising reporting, forecasting, and decision-making frameworks
- Support open-to-buy management and inventory lifecycle planning
Cross-Functional Commercialization, GTM & Visual Merchandising Partnership- Partner closely with Product, Marketing, Ecommerce, Creative, Sales, and PR teams to support successful seasonal launches and category storytelling
- Help prioritize key collections, launches, and commercial opportunities across channels
- Translate product direction into compelling customer-facing merchandising strategies across wholesale, ecommerce, marketplaces, and retail environments
- Partner with Creative and Ecommerce teams to elevate visual merchandising, digital storytelling, category presentation, and onsite customer experience
- Help establish merchandising standards for product presentation, collection flow, category hierarchy, and seasonal storytelling across all customer touchpoints
- Support launch planning and commercialization efforts across ecommerce, wholesale, marketplaces, and retail channels
- Ensure merchandising priorities are clearly communicated across the organization
- Partner with Marketing and Ecommerce teams to support campaign planning, category storytelling, and customer engagement strategies
- Contribute to launch recap and seasonal hindsight processes to continuously improve performance
Team Leadership & Organizational Development- Lead, mentor, and develop the merchandising team
- Establish clear merchandising processes, calendars, milestones, and accountability
- Build a collaborative, data-driven, customer-focused merchandising culture
- Partner cross-functionally to improve communication, alignment, and operational efficiency
- Help evolve merchandising capabilities and organizational structure as the business changes
- Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, urgency, and continuous improvement
Qualifications- 10+ years of merchandising, buying, or category management experience within consumer brands, ecommerce, or wholesale organizations
- Strong background in assortment planning, inventory management, merchandising analytics, and category performance
- Experience managing merchandising processes across multiple channels including wholesale and ecommerce
- Proven ability to drive sales growth, margin improvement, and inventory productivity
- Strong analytical, financial, and operational acumen
- Experience leading and developing teams
- Excellent communication, collaboration, and organizational leadership skills
- Strong understanding of customer behavior, seasonal merchandising, and retail storytelling
- Ability to operate both strategically and hands-on in a fast-moving environment
- Experience in home, gift, lifestyle, apparel, or consumer products
