About the roleWe're looking for a hands-on manager to run demand planning and purchase order execution day to day for an assigned segment of our lineup, within a catalog of roughly 5,000 SKUs. The goal is to keep us fully in stock without being overstocked.
This is not a forecasting job that ends when the plan is published. You build the forecast, place the buy, and follow it through: vendor acknowledgement, cargo ready date, and handoff to transportation, until product lands in our buildings on the week we need it. You'll report to the director who leads demand planning and purchasing, and you'll be the person closest to the numbers and the POs.
The role is also constrained by what our buildings can physically absorb. Door capacity and labor set a ceiling on how much product we can receive in a given week, so purchasing has to be smoothed against that ceiling, not just against demand. Chinese New Year is the clearest case: the pull-ahead is unavoidable, but the volume has to be feathered in over months. When purchasing isn't smoothed, containers sit at the port accruing demurrage.
What you'll ownDemand planning and buy plans
- Build and maintain the forecast across your segment, including new items, seasonal ramps, and end-of-life
- Translate forecasts into weekly buy plans with clear coverage targets by SKU and category
- Recommend how much inventory each category needs to stay in stock without carrying more than it can turn, and bring the analysis behind those targets
- Review forecast accuracy and bias regularly, and fix the drivers rather than just the numbers
Purchase order execution
- Place purchase orders against the plan, on the cadence the plan requires
- Smooth purchasing against weekly receiving capacity, which your segment shares with the rest of the catalog, so buys land inside what our buildings can absorb
- Build and run the seasonal pull-ahead plan, Chinese New Year above all, as a months-long flow rather than a single large buy
PO lifecycle management
- Chase vendor acknowledgements and hold the line on committed dates
- Validate cargo ready dates and keep them honest
- Hand off cleanly to the transportation booking team so bookings, transit, and receipt line up with need dates
- Surface exceptions early, while there's still time to act on them, and escalate to the director when they need more weight
- Work daily with merchandising, transportation, and distribution center operations
Vendor management
- Track vendor performance against acknowledged dates and cargo ready commitments
- When POs slip, get on the phone. Use the weight of our business to hold vendors to what they committed to
- Maintain the scorecards and run the escalation path that make those conversations short
The AI mandateA lot of this function runs on manual monitoring today, and we don't believe it should. We want forecasting supported by models. We want PO placement automated wherever the rules are clear enough to encode. We want exceptions in the PO lifecycle surfaced automatically the moment they emerge, so they reach us while the date can still be recovered.
As the manager closest to the work, you'll be the one who spots what can be automated, builds or prototypes the first versions, and keeps them running. Prior AI expertise is not a requirement. What you do need is technical savvy, real curiosity about these tools, and the conviction that this is how the function gets better. If your instinct when you see repetitive manual work is to ask what could be automated, you'll do well here.
What you bringWe care more about how you think than whether you've held this exact title. If you're deeply analytical, can hold vendors to their commitments, and want to build solutions with AI, we want to talk to you.
- Strong analytical capability: you work directly in the data, build the model yourself, and can defend the numbers
- Fluency with SQL, BI tools, and advanced Excel, and the ability to pick up an ERP or planning system quickly
- Hands-on experience in demand planning, inventory planning, or purchasing, ideally with a large SKU base and overseas vendors
- Vendor-facing experience: you've chased suppliers on commitments and know what actually moves them
- Experience building solutions with automation or AI, or a clear track record of teaching yourself new tools and putting them to work
- Comfort operating against hard physical or operational constraints, not just against a plan on paper
What success looks like in your first year- In-stock rate improves while weeks of supply holds flat or comes down
- Forecast accuracy and bias improve at the SKU and category level, and you can explain why
- Receipts land inside weekly door and labor capacity, with Chinese New Year volume feathered rather than spiked
- Vendor on-time performance to acknowledged dates improves, tracked on a scorecard everyone recognizes
- At least the most repetitive monitoring tasks are automated, replaced by exceptions that surface on their own
Raymour & Flanigan proudly supports a drug and smoke free work environment.
Please note that we are currently unable to offer visa sponsorship for this position. Candidates must have authorization to work in the U.S. without the need for sponsorship now or in the future.
