Retail Demand Planner

MGA Entertainment, a consumer entertainment Products Company headquartered in Chatsworth, California, manufactures innovative lines of proprietary products for the toy and consumer electronics market. The company also licenses its IP in such areas as apparel, home décor, stationery, and sporting goods. The MGA family includes award-winning brands such as LOL Surprise, Little Tikes®, Project MC2, and Zapf Creation®. For more information, please visit

The Retail Demand Planner is responsible for Planning, Analyzing and Executing the account level Annual Operating Plan. The position reports into the Global Supply Chain and can be located in either Chatsworth, CA. or remotely in cities MGA has sales offices. Demand Planners partner with Sales to develop Joint Business Plans and create monthly shipping forecasts. The position collaborates with Supply Planning, Allocations, Order Management and Logistics to ensure orders and forecasts align and are shipped on-time;

in-full. The position is a subject matter expert in the vendor guide, customer scorecards and retailer systems. This is a unique position requiring internal and external cross-functional relationships within Sales, Retail Partners and the Supply Chain to execute, deliver and grow MGA’s business.

The position will focus on the following areas:

• Create seasonal ladder consumption plans and convert to retail purchase/receipt flows to support customer JBP and purchase commitments.
• Develop Monthly, time-phased shipping forecast to support S&OP process and monthly sales projections. Understand how sales trends, promotional activity and shipment patterns affect demand and make appropriate adjustments to forecasts.
• Analyze daily, weekly POS sales trends along with like item comparisons to identify brand or store level sales opportunities, ensure retailer network inventory is pushed to stores and in-stocks remain healthy.
• Track orders to forecasts and lead weekly supply chain meetings to ensure seasonal transitions and promotional activities are on time and all orders shipped in full.
• Subject matter expert regarding account vendor guide, compliance, customer scorecards and chargebacks.
• Develop functional best-practices or tools supporting forecasting analytics, ERP solutions and S&OP process.

• 1. Manage consumption, shipping forecasts and reconciliation weekly. 40%
• 2. Analyze Forecast commit vs. GRS, understand how sales trends, promotional activity and shipment patterns affect demand and make appropriate adjustments to forecasts. 35%
• 3. Review POS, in-stocks, inventory, shipping and order trends to deliver monthly targets. 15%
• 4. Develop forecasting best-practices and analytical tools 10%
• TOTAL TIME UTILIZATION 100%

• Self-motivated, results-oriented leader with a proven track record of best in class demand forecasting and replenishment planning practices to deliver annual operating plans.
• A root cause, continuous improvement mentality focused on forecast accuracy, in-stocks, inventory management
• Proactive, creative thinker able to assess retail environment, POS trends and promotional lifts and translate into sales opportunities.
• Strong analytical and modeling capabilities – able to summarize and communicate concisely both verbal and written to all levels of the organization
• Experience with statistical modeling and advanced planning systems like Retail Link, Logility, Power BI
• Strong understanding of forecasting, planning, order management, retail operations and logistics required to execute and deliver annual operating goals.
• Advanced knowledge using Excel, Power Point and data warehousing applications like Power BI.

• 5+ Years of experience in fast-paced consumer goods industry
• Toy manufacturing experience strongly preferred
• Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, Supply Chain Management or a similar technical field required--Master’s Degree preferred