Director, Fashion Buy Planning

Overview

The Director, Fashion Buy Planning will be responsible for the creation and maintenance of inventory and sales plans. Scrutinizing historical performance for areas of opportunity in retail sales, inventory growth or reduction, and increased product margins. They are directly responsible for the creation and upkeep of orders. This role reports to the VP of Planning and Allocation and has dotted line accountability to the VP – Chief Merchant, requiring reporting of shortcomings and opportunities in inventory on a weekly basis.

• Generate and oversee a retail sales plan that reaches our financial, marketing, and merchandising goals.
• Monitor budgets to a subcategory level for each buying group, investigating causes of inventory, sales and margin discrepancies and reporting findings to merchants as well as VP of Planning and Chief Merchant.
• Manage associate buy planner-generated weekly reporting to ensure timely execution of adjustments to inventory purchasing, pricing, and assortment.
• Summarize and analyze actual performance against plan, on a weekly, quarterly and annual basis, highlight in‑season adjustments to original plan.
• Analyze historical data and current trends to identify areas of opportunity and risk by area.
• Adjust inventory plans based on minimum assortments, working with merchandise buying team to account for display, back‑stock, and unique style requirements.
• Responsible for timely review of current inventory conditions at individual stores versus customer services metrics, identification of issues impacting overall customer service objectives, and resolving issues through allocation/rebalancing and re‑prioritization of processing flow where possible. When conditions exist which cannot be resolved through these methods, this position is responsible for escalating the issues to the VP of Planning & Allocation.
• Maintain unique assortments for each specific market to target the needs of our customers.
• Identify underperforming articles and propose discontinuing, markdown, or scrapping.
• Approve purchasing requirements (net needs) and potential replenishment opportunities.
• Direct Associate/Assistant Buy Planner and Merchandise/Senior Merchandise Coordinator to execute purchase orders to finished goods vendors.
• Provide demand for components to component sourcing team (generally via component minimums)
• Determine appropriate minimum quantities / ratings for each specific primary hierarchy.
• Responsible for monitoring the current turn percent for each primary hierarchy and identifying items that fall out of the company range.
• Foster growth in associate and assistant buy‑planners via continual improvement initiatives, linked‑in learning, and coaching.

• 5+ years of experience in retail merchandise planning & optimization, demand forecasting, inventory management, and pricing analysis.
• Expertise in Microsoft Excel, Word, and Power Point
• Advanced knowledge of retail planning.
• Proper principles and practices of data collection and consolidation.
• Strong communication skills.
• Excellent presentation skills
• Ability to give clear and direct feedback to large groups.

For the best success in this role, candidates must be analytical, accurate, steady, and timely. The ideal candidate will be a problem‑solver with strong critical‑thinking skills who can work with small details as well as the big picture. Those who take initiative and who take pride in high‑quality work will succeed in this position.

The primary environment for this role is a combination of an open office and a remote workplace. Considerable business is conducted using the telephone and computer technology. This role is expected to be on‑site in Home Office 1 day per week on an ongoing basis. Note that all hybrid and remote work conditions are covered in the Company’s current Remote Work Policy and Remote Work Agreement, incorporated here by reference.

Travel may be required to stores, conferences or events up to 20% of the time.

Base Pay range for this role is $117,000 - $158,000 annually. Your placement in the range is determined through interviews, a review of experience, knowledge, skills, balanced pay with other team members and alignment with geographic market data. Home office base pay ranges are based on the Denver market. We target most new hire offers toward the lower end of the listed range, but more demonstrated experience, knowledge and skills may result in a higher starting rate.

Home office positions are eligible for consideration for an annual bonus, based on total company performance. Amounts vary by role and are based on a percentage of eligible earnings for the fiscal year.