Allocation Analyst

Overview

About Catalyst Brands:

Catalyst Brands is a leading U.S.

-based retail organization formed in 2025 through the merger of JCPenney and SPARC Group, combining multiple iconic fashion brands under one umbrella. The company manages a diversified portfolio of well-known brands including Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Nautica, Lucky Brand, and JCPenney. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Catalyst Brands focuses on delivering modern retail experiences while leveraging the heritage of established global brands. With a workforce of over tens of thousands and multi-billion-dollar revenue, the organization operates at a large scale across retail, e-commerce, and supply chain domains.

The company emphasizes innovation, digital transformation, and customer-centric strategies to enhance brand value and consumer engagement. Catalyst Brands is expanding its global presence, including a growing capability centre in India that supports technology, digital operations, and analytics. It aims to drive operational excellence and business growth by integrating technology, data-driven insights, and efficient retail practices.

The Analyst will be part of Planning & Allocation Team where you will leverage your skills and business acumen to achieve the organization and team goals.

Primary Allocation Responsibilities:

• Execute comprehensive allocation strategies to support merchandise assortment plans, ensuring consistent alignment with business objectives and buyer direction.
• Manage the end-to-end inventory allocation process utilizing JDA (or other relevant inventory management systems), ensuring timely and accurate product flow across all retail locations.
• Continuously monitor and analyze store performance, sales trends, and regional/seasonal demand to make data-driven allocation adjustments that enhance product availability and minimize stockouts or overstocks.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams—including Buying Units (Buyers, Assistant Buyers, Assortment Planners, and Inventory Demand Analysts)—to support pre-season and in-season merchandise planning decisions.
• Conduct in-depth hindsight reviews of past seasons to identify key learnings and apply insights to improve future allocation and assortment planning strategies.
• Provide clear, strategic recommendations to business units through ongoing review of critical business performance reports, ensuring decisions are backed by data and market intelligence.
• Proactively manage residual inventory and warehouse stock by ensuring timely allocation to stores, mitigating potential overstocking or markdowns.
• Evaluate and initiate channel-to-channel transfers, Return to Warehouse (RTW), Return to Vendor (RTV), Transfers and Returns (TARs), and Enterprise Inventory Reserve (EIR) actions to optimize inventory health.

Primary Replenishment Responsibilities:

• Drive Instock and adhoc analysis to find opportunities and risks, providing actionable insights to Business Units, ASMs, and Inventory Distribution Analysts to meet sales, profit, and inventory goals.
• Drive and perform periodic assortment optimization by utilizing tools, providing insights to Inventory Distribution Analysts and Business Units, and managing processes for expansion and discontinuation.
• Review store level inventory ensuring it aligns with expectations, and action when stores are outside of tolerance. Identify and action store level opportunities through enhanced analytics and Plano communications.
• Manage demand planning and buy quantification in collaboration with BUs and Sourcing teams. Responsible for sending supplier information and supporting the demand planning team with data.
• Analyze and quantify vendor projections, fill rates, and in-stock trends.
• Run replenishment orders. Review and release of all manual order types. Adjust SOQs on an exception basis and review/action on exception reports for ordering.
• Review and action Target Inventory/Minimum Safety Stock at all locations (Warehouse, Store, DLC’s).
• Manage system setup and maintenance of assortment by activating and deactivating SKUs as per buyers' intent and optimization.
• Review All Replenishment Parameters to achieve optimal inventory…