Merchandise Planner

Job purpose:

Responsible for merchandise financial, strategic and assortment Planning, inventory stock optimization, and the category promotions

Primary responsibilities:

• Manage the development of annual, seasonal, monthly and weekly merchandise plans. Develop and communicate comprehensive department financial and product strategies.
• Manage the Category Store wise Sales Budget, Budget Review every month, Category Sales Forecast (Projection).
• Review of Store Grading & Store, Size Ratio/Pack size, Assortment/Color Analysis, Article MRP Mix.
• Support in determining high-level financial goals including pre-season financial plans, in-season projections, open-to-buy management (OTB) and new store budgets at dept level.
• Prepare and maintain department/category merchandise MIS analytics based on actual sales, sales forecasts, forth coming events and replenishment needs
• Maximizes Sales and profitability for the department/category
• Assist in the creation of merchandise/assortment plans for the category based on insights gained from merchandise analytics, customer preference, historical trends and future outlook projected by the buyer
• Actively participate in assortment development and review, providing data and analysis to support decision-making
• Ensure effective in season management across territories (stock balancing, markdown management, stock analysis, stock vs sales performance)
• Ensure optimum category inventory levels are maintained at concept/territory keeping in mind store requirements as well as working capital constraints
• Ensure excess category inventory is not maintained at the warehouses or the stores and there is proper adherence to the concept/territory ageing policy
• Provide inputs on the expected margins, possible price points and other parameters for promotions within the product category
• Help analyze the effectiveness of the promotions in achieving the targeted levels of sales and margins
• Help analyze the existing stock levels and liaise with the Buying/VM/Marketing team for timely roll out of promotional campaigns to maintain the territory / warehouse inventory holding norms as well to achieve targeted sales.