Merchandise Planner (Fashion Retail)

Our Clothing Retail Client is currently looking for a Merchandise Planner based in Durban North.

Remuneration:

• Basic Salary of R25k/R30k – R60k
• This amount will be a total CTC (no pension or medical aid – candidate 100% responsible for their own so must factor this into the salary).
• Working Hours either 07:00 – 16:00 or 08:00 – 17:00 (Close earlier on a Friday).

Preferred Qualification and Experience:

• Grade 12/Matric
• Relevant 3-year Degree/Diploma
• Min 3-5 years relevant Retail Planning experience accountable for own area and managing allocators/order clerks.
• Apparel/Accessories/Footwear experience is a preference.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Required:

• Advanced knowledge of Excel, retail systems, and general computer skills.
• Must be able to run pivot tables and do VLOOKUP functions and create and maintain advanced reports.
• Must understand the forecasting aspect of planning and interaction of key KPI’s.
• Strong merchant, trader, and commercial mentality.
• Team collaborator who is strategic and forward-thinking.
• Strong planning, organizing, administrating, and coordinating skills.

Job Spec:

• To drive sales and profitability (GP) through the category management of sales, stock, OTB, and margin.
• Collate/manipulate data for manual input into the planning tool.
• Forecast sales and stock on the planning templates based on current trends, performance, and opportunities.
• Ensure that category stock holding is in line with the budget/forecast and manage the OTB accordingly.
• Make commercial recommendations based on current trade and propose actions.
• Assortment planning and assisting in product ranging.
• Analyse size curves at store level as well as other key user-defined attributes.
• Seasonal analysis and post-mortem with corresponding strategy and range planning.
• Responsible for developing and translating departmental pre-season merchandise strategies into executable in-season merchandise plans.
• Establish pre-season sales and margin plans, together with the inventory levels required to support them.
• In season, re-project sales and markdowns in consideration of the impact on margin.
• Manage the allocation teams to balance inventory and assortment across the stores to ensure the right stock is in the right store at the right time.
• Provide financial strategies for sales, markdowns, inventory, and gross margin, and also responsible for accurate in-season forecasting, driving course corrections and improvements based on variances between actual results and the plan.
• Working closely in a team with buyers and allocators to make sure the range is executed.
• Liaise with buying departments regarding style performance.
• Controlling the budget and managing the supply chain of the different categories/departments.
• Strategically manage stock and produce accurate figures for analysis.
• Grading stores and calculating unit buys for the buying team in order to support the strategy.
• Oversee and work with Allocators to correctly distribute stock to stores through allocations, consolidations, and stock movements.
• Maintaining store stock levels for core merchandise.
• Other ad hoc reporting.

Please take note: if you have not been contacted within 14 days, please consider your application unsuccessful.