Chris Skinner Email and Phone Number

Merchandising leader responsible for the product assortment, strategy, and priorities for Licensed Apparel across key sports including NBA/WNBA/NCAA/Global Football.Lead Product Line Architecture, Product Line Plan, Franchise & Classification Excellence and act as the pivot between product creation and marketplace adopt teams to receive and provide inputs throughout the go-to-market process.

Bring the global strategy to life through creating assortment frameworks that become consumer right assortments that deliver against financial goals.Develop seasonal assortments informed by consumer trends and GEO capacity and insights.Provide seasonal assortment tools, strategies, and inspiration to enable GEO adoption and execution.Collaborate with Product Management, Design, and Brand on long-term product strategies and opportunities.Harmonize assortment and product plans with GEO Merchandising and cross-category Merchandising partners.Leading strategy on Men’s World Cup 2022 plan. Functional leader on Global Football Leadership Team.Coach and mentor to newly onboarded Associate Merchant. Facilitate alignment on strategy and assortments with Global Football Merchandising peers in Women’s and Kid’s.

Drive assortment direction focused on category consumer right assortments to ensure a holistic, premium, differentiated, and elevated marketplace. Responsible for driving the category vision market wide and working with Geography partners across the integrated marketplace to drive well-informed assortment strategies. Manage assortment strategies that enable segmentation and differentiation for the globe.Bring the global strategy to life through creating modular based assortment frameworks that become consumer right assortments that deliver financial goals.Understand the consumer and the marketplace across all geographies.Drive strategic conversations with Product and Sales teams, informed by marketplace capacity insights.Own seasonal execution as it relates to initiatives, assortments, and pay-off strategies.Collaborate cross-categorically, and ensure merchandising strategies are executed in harmony each season.Partner with our DTC counterparts to drive and execute consumer right assortments for Nike Retail.Establish global seed-to-scale product strategies in partnership with NRG Merchandising and Sales.Deep dive into consumer trends (monthly insights recap) and Lifestyle FW consumer mindsets (sneaker obsessed, trend maven) project.Champion importance of team culture and fun (#sneakerthemefriday, applause awards).

Lead and direct two retail planners and one business planner to reconcile financial plans.Provide necessary coaching and mentoring to team members.Pre-seasonDevelop the topline plan for Finish Line including retail sales, receipts, inventory, margin, and turn.Create informed plans against categories, gender, and business units (FW/APP/EQ).Establish monthly sales and inventory plans by comp stores and new stores.Ensure the retail plan is aligned against the seasonal booking plan.Collaborate and include input from key stakeholders including the Account, Sales, Planning, Category, and Merchandising.In-seasonRecap weekly results to plan.Create monthly (rolling 12 months) OTB forecast (sales, inventory, margin, turn) against plan dimensions of category, gender, business unit for the account.Identify potential opportunities/risks in the business particularly against inventory plans; develop recommendations for the business.Post-seasonDevelop topline business review of business vs plan and LY - sales, margin, inventory, and turn.Review comp door and new door performance.Recap bookings gross to net.

Identify unconstrained category growth potential through market/competitive analyses for the Young Athletes Category.Partner with cross functional category leaders to ensure market opportunities are grounded in consumer, product investment, and distribution needs.Integrate market insights across Business Planning Processes.Develop a 12-month rolling Category Sales Plan that utilizes historical data and trends, order bookings and trends, and forecast models to deliver a channel, product engine, and key item view of the business.Review and analyze deviations from the plan; identify potential risks or market opportunities in the business through decision ready insights.Marketplace Health Initiative team leader.

Manage assortment, financial and inventory plans for the Old Navy Boy’s Division.Accountable for career development and skill development of two planners, one end-to-end planner, and one allocator to ensure job satisfaction, retention, and future talent development.Provide strategic guidance and direction for the successful development, execution, and communications of financial and inventory plans and strategies to meet or exceed sales, gross margin, GMROI, and inventory goals.Develop and communicate comprehensive department financial and product strategies.Manage the development of annual, seasonal, monthly, and weekly merchandise plans, as appropriate.Reconcile tops-down & bottoms-up department plans to division plans and forecasts.Manage monthly department level open-to-buy activities.Develop multiple department level pricing recommendations and strategies in alignment with divisional financial plans.Recommend departmental strategies for packing pre-packs, size balancing and, inventory balancing.Implement consistent and profitable in-season replenishment strategies and practices.Lead teams in assessing and executing exceptions for in-season replenishment.Gap Inc. Inventory Management trainer.Recruitment and assessment lead for IM Ready training program.Career Path/Manager Ready committee member.

Create assortment, inventory and financial plans for Old Navy Men's Division.Maintain integrity of plans through in-season management of promotions, markdowns, and allocations of merchandise.Integral team member of new localization strategies of licensed sports tees.Divisional Pricing Representative, Subject Mater Expert, Simplify/Clarify project lead, and Community Leader.Coach and mentor for new employees.

Handled inventory and logistics for a Gap store.Manage a team of 7 individuals.

Built unique relationships with students, faculty, administrators, alumni board members, the president of the college, and the college's board of trustees; acting as a liaison between these groups.Worked closely with local businesses, political leaders, and other student leaders throughout the state of Utah.Worked on numerous student-led groups and events, managing the efforts of nearly 75 student leaders.

Helped initialize and manage Real Salt Lake Soccer Marketing Street Team.Built brand awareness through community events.Efforts increased corporate sponsorship and ticket sales.Learned the value of customer appreciation, gained sales experience, and managed client accounts.