Director of Planning, OMNI Channel Full Time

Position Overview:

The Director of Planning will lead the demand planning process while delivering inventory targets in line with strategy and revenue forecasts and will be responsible for the purchasing, and inventory management of the Brixton WSL & DTC business. Reporting directly to the SVP, Planning & Merchandising, the Director of Planning will play a crucial role in developing and executing strategic plans to optimize inventory, maximize sales, and enhance profitability. This role will oversee the analysis of current business trends, market data, and historical data across all sales channels to direct our key account plans, inventory, and purchasing to respond to financial targets.

The ideal candidate will be agile, drive business results, develop teams, and evolve processes to achieve strong positive results in a growing business. Candidate should possess a strong analytical mindset, excellent communication skills, and a deep understanding of retail math/cost accounting.

Responsibilities Overview:

Demand Planning & Forecasting

• Lead demand forecasting activities by managing & facilitating the monthly demand re-forecast in alignment with Sales and Finance. Identify levers to increase financial growth and reduce risk.
• Drive the quality of forecasts in terms of accuracy, timeliness, coordination, and communication; provide recommendations to close gaps in the strategic plan while continuously improving forecast accuracy and streamlining the process.
• Establish annual forecast accuracy targets; communicate key forecast metrics to senior-level management and functional teams, including opportunities and actions to drive improvement.
• Create and monitor open-to-buy, weeks of supply, in-stock rates, and excess inventory; collaborate with Finance and Operations teams to proactively identify risks and present opportunities to continuously improve working capital efficiency.

Purchase Planning & Inventory Management

• Lead planning team to maintain optimal inventory levels and manage products through their lifecycle (including promotions, markdowns, etc.) to meet financial targets of inventory turns, margin, sales objectives.
• Guide product selling patterns, the timing of future purchases, and potential purchasing efficiencies.
• Develop bottoms-up demand and inventory plans and deliver inventory throughput, financial, and operational targets.
• Develop channel inventory strategy by product category aligned with open-to-buy budget.
• Collaborating with Global Sourcing teams to establish and manage factory capacity plans; anticipate and manage production and capacity issues.
• Conduct quantitative analysis of demand and supply trends, present findings, and execute plans to optimize future forecasts.
• Align with the Merchandising team to build merch plans from a sell through perspective.
• Signal inventory risks and opportunities within core/carryover, such as overstock or stockouts, and develop contingency plans to mitigate these risks.

Strategic Planning & Business Analysis

• Support finance in building internal plans with visibility into wholesale & DTC trend as well as build internal channel plans.
• Manage demand planning KPI’s; share out and generate regular reports on sell-through rates, stock aging, and other relevant KPIs.
• Customer facing to work alongside KAM. Attends customer meetings to help suggest business strategies to drive business/mitigate risk from a planning and financial lens.
• Build key account plans in partnership with Sales and support key accounts to negotiate plans in partnership with sales with retailers when they are being built.
• Marry the customer sell out business/trend/style selling with internal plans/buys/forecasts.
• Partner with Finance and SVP of Planning & Merchandising on long-range plans.

People and Process Leadership

• Develop, train, and drive the performance of direct reports.
• Innovation and focus on continuous improvement to ensure procedures and policies are followed across the supply chain organization.
• Develop and implement tools and processes to improve forecast capabilities, efficiency, and accuracy.
• Collaborating cross-functionally to complete special projects as a growth organization requires, including work on IT system implementations and core demand planning improvement efforts.
• Promoting a culture of curiosity and continuous learning.
• Provide leadership for all systems development relating to planning.
• Drive a culture of analysis and execution, taking ownership of identified issues in demand planning to drive quantifiable solutions and positive business results.

• Minimum 8 years’ experience in demand planning, inventory management, and account planning roles with open-to-buy experience, and at least 5+ years’ experience leading a Planning function.
• Wholesale key account relationships and/or retail buying experience are a plus.
• Critical thinker with strong analytical skills complemented by solid business acumen and an understanding of key financial metrics.
• Ability to problem solve within and beyond own area of responsibility.
• Synthesize large amounts of data, distill the data down to its essence, and present information in a compelling and persuasive manner.
• Strong initiative and collaboration; Entrepreneurial leader who can work cross-functionally to build alignment to support new ideas and initiatives.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Proven organizational and multi-tasking skills.
• ERP experience in NetSuite, Shopify & Domo

Proficiency in MS Excel and PowerPoint