Director, Merchandise Planning & Allocation
Wyomissing, Pa
Leader of North America Demand Planning Team (5 members) for retail, web, and wholesale businesses; and Allocation Team (5 members) for 200+ retail boutiques and 20 outlet stores in US, Canada and Puerto Rico. • Built, cultivated and led highly engaged teams. Restructured roles and responsibilities; hired & trained new members; refocused teams on key metrics, reporting and communications. Resulting in improved forecast accuracy (67% to 80%), inventory flow to stores, service levels for web & wholesale customers (80% to 98%) and achieving reduction in inventory goals.• Collaborated with merchant partners to develop and lead the processes of strategic long range product category plans, tops down plans, bottoms up item forecasts, and pre-season & in-season item forecasting and inventory buying. • Created a merchandise financial planning tool for both retail and web businesses: MTD, YTD, YTG and Year view of inventory, sales, markdowns, product margin and receipts by category. Managed the process to achieve sales and inventory goals.• Key senior leader driving Sales and Operational Planning (S&OP) processes. Developed executive sales reporting by product category and business channel, created forecast accuracy and bias reporting for month and year-to-date. • Orchestrated monthly forecast consensus meetings for all 3 business units with high-level / cross-functional leadership teams, ensuring S&OP objectives were met and critical path decisions were made.• Recognized as key leader and go-to person for cross-functional groups of Merchandising, Marketing, Supply Chain, Finance and Senior Management; managing and resolving any sales and inventory planning questions / concerns and challenges.• Acted as the business Project Manager on Demand Solutions DSX software implementation that provided SKU-level forecasting solution for a multichannel business (retail in units and retail $ and wholesale in cases and list $).