Purpose:The Planner is responsible for driving sales, margin, and demand performance through data-driven planning and tactical decision-making across assigned categories and locations. This role develops forecasts, manages assortment strategies, and aligns working capital investments with business objectives to ensure demand signals and financial plans support sustainable growth and profitability.
Essential Functions:- Analyzes weekly and monthly sales, margin, sell-through, demand productivity and performance trends across assigned categories and locations; monitors KPIs, identifying risks and opportunities to optimize financial performance
- Develops and maintains sales and financial forecasts aligned with budget and business targets, incorporating promotional, seasonal, and market-specific factors
- Builds and refines article level demand forecasts based on historical data, trends, and business inputs, providing clear demand signals to support supply chain and replenishment planning
- Owns and manages product assortments within assigned categories, defining working capital investment targets and financial guardrails aligned with sales and margin objectives
- Establishes category level and article level expectations based on demand plans, ensuring alignment between working capital investment strategy and overall business financial goals
- Evaluates product lifecycle performance and adjusts assortment strategies to identify opportunities for item expansion, introduction, or rationalization
- Analyzes store-level and regional performance to tailor assortment strategies, identifying customer trends and market dynamics across locations
- Partners with Category Management, Supply Chain, Operations, and Finance teams to align on business priorities and ensure execution aligns with commercial intent
- Supports new store openings, resets, and concept changes through assortment planning, ensuring product assortment aligns with customer demand and store formats
- Develops insights using analytical tools (Power BI, SAP, Excel) to identify trends and opportunities; prepares and presents performance reviews, forecasts, and business recommendations to leadership
- Provides clear demand signals to support supply chain and replenishment planning processes
Reporting Relationship: The Planner reports to the Planner Manager
Minimum Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills, and Work Environment: - Education and Experience: The combination of education and professional experience must exceed 6 years:
- In a leadership role: 2 years of experience supervising a team of planning professionals preferred
- In a technical role: Requires 6 years of retail experience engaged in developing and delivering planning programs
- A bachelor's degree in a program related to the functional area can count for 3 of the 6-year requirement
- In the industry: 3-5 years of Retail experience
- Specialized Skillset/Competencies/Traits:
- Knowledge of financial tools and concept profitability; understanding and use of market research and market trend information
- Extensive experience of implementing and utilizing an OTB system when managing sales forecasting
- Demonstrated experience exhibiting a continuous improvement mindset with the ability to optimize work processes and achieve positive results
- Advanced business acumen and has the strategic mindset required to understand the long-term implications of planning decisions and to advance the organization's goals
- Demonstrated history of anticipating and balancing the needs of the business with the needs of complex stakeholders, the employee population, and individual circumstances
- Demonstrated history of creating and maintaining positive work environments
