Lead Demand Planner - Innovation Ventures

• Posting
  
  Title:
  
  Lead Demand Planner - Innovation Ventures
• Requisition Number: R239501
• Location:
  
  El Segundo, California
• Job Category:
  Strategy/Planning

CREATIVITY IS OUR SUPERPOWER.It's our heritage and it's also our future. Because we don't just make toys. We create innovative products and experiences that inspire fans, entertain audiences and develop children through play. Mattel is at its best when every member of our team feels respected, included, and heard-when everyone can show up as themselves and do their best work every day.

We value and share an infinite range of ideas and voices that evolve and broaden our perspectives with a reach that extends into all our brands, partners, and suppliers.

As our entrepreneurial innovation studio, Innovation Ventures exists to create the next generation of breakthrough brands, new business models, and entirely new ways to play. Operating with the agility of a startup and the resources of one of the world’s leading toy companies, our team turns emerging consumer insights into bold new concepts that have the potential to become Mattel’s next growth driver.

If you’re energized by ambiguity, passionate about solving problems in new ways, and excited by the opportunity to build something from the ground up, Innovation Ventures offers the rare chance to shape the future of play while making a lasting impact on Mattel’s long-term growth.

Mattel Ventures is focused on creating and incubating new brands and business models that may require different consumer, channel, and operating approaches than Mattel’s established businesses. The Ventures Commercialization workstream translates new concepts into executable business plans, connecting consumer demand, commercial strategy, finance, supply chain, and launch execution. Demand Planning provides the fact base for launch commitments, inventory decisions, and scaling choices when historical demand is limited and assumptions are evolving.

The team works cross-functionally to support Mattel-led, licensee-led, or hybrid commercialization models and, where appropriate, transition successful ventures into Mattel’s broader commercial engine.

The Lead Demand Planner is responsible for developing and maintaining demand plans for Mattel Ventures projects from early commercialization through launch and scale. Day-to-day responsibilities include building scenario-based forecasts using consumer testing, analogous products, customer inputs, digital and social signals, point-of-sale data, and shipment trends as available; translating those forecasts into inventory and supply requirements; and rapidly updating assumptions as new information emerges.

The planner partners with Ventures, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Planning, Customer Fulfillment, Product Development, and external licensees or partners as applicable to support launch decisions and business planning. This role will help create a repeatable demand-planning approach for new ventures and support the transition of successful businesses into Mattel’s broader planning processes.

• Demand Planning and Forecasting:
  The ideal candidate will develop item, assortment, channel, and market demand plans for Ventures projects with limited historical data. The planner will use analogous products, consumer insights, customer input, digital and social signals, and available point-of-sale and shipment data to build base, upside, and downside scenarios and maintain clear planning assumptions.
• Launch and Commercialization Planning:
  The ideal candidate will translate route-to-market strategies into launch volumes, phasing, inventory positions, and replenishment requirements. The…