Director, Merchandise Planning - Wholesale

Vuori is re-defining what athletic apparel looks like: built to move and sweat in but designed with a casual aesthetic to transition into everyday life. We draw inspiration from an active coastal California lifestyle; an integration of fitness, creative expression and life. Our high energy fast paced retail environment is reflected in the clothes we make. We aim to inspire others to take on all aspects of their lives with clarity, enthusiasm and purpose…while having a lot of fun along the way. We are proud to be an outlet for opportunity and for personal growth and success.

The Director, Merchandise Planning - Wholesale will focus on building out a high performing merchandise planning function and lead the successful development, communication, and execution of sales and inventory strategies that support the financial plan. This individual is responsible for supporting the team with developing strategic merchandise plans and targets for key categories to maximize sales, optimize inventory, and increase margin through the analysis of historical sales trends, current in-season patterns, and future forecasts. 

The ideal candidate will have experience with inventory planning processes (including open-to-buy, replenishment processes, category planning, and gross margin) for an apparel business or similar. Ability to be flexible, multi-task, comfortable with high sku counts, and able to prioritize under tight deadlines. It is critical to take initiative, particularly when working cross-departmentally with merchandising, production, finance, and marketing to support our evolving business needs. This individual has a broad skill set including strong Planning and Allocation, Category management skills, Analytical horsepower, excellent business judgment, and deep curiosity about how things work. 

What you’ll get to do:

• Manage open-to-buy process for Wholesale, providing top-down guidance and direction around key initiatives. 
• Manage the creation, review and execution of the Open to Buy budget to meet revenue and margin and expectations. 
• Oversee the management of core replenishment, including analysis, buying, and receipt management to ensure never-out-of-stock positions on all key items while maintaining inventory turn targets. 
• Analyze the business on an on-going basis to understand core drivers; identify opportunities and risks and partner with divisional leaders to respond appropriately. 
• Provide both qualitative and quantitative insights at seasonal hindsight and investment reviews, drawing conclusions to inform future product line architecture. 
• Build annual plans in partnership with SVP and Senior Director of Planning to support sales and margin growth and development of assigned product categories while supporting brand initiatives. 
• Provide high-level analysis, business reports, and qualitative and actionable feedback and recommendations to senior leadership, including contributions to quarterly hindsight and investment reviews. 
• Lead the strategic financial objectives for assigned product categories through accurate and proactive management and forecasting of sales, margin, and inventory levels to achieve targets for Vuori ecommerce business. 
• Develop and share merchandise analysis to inform and lead decision making, including upcoming buys, promotional activities, marketing efforts, current opportunities, and risk management scenarios. 
• Develop a comprehensive merchandise planning strategy, forecasting and reporting by category, franchise, SKU and channel, based on selling data, customer analytics, category dynamics and market conditions. 
• Partner with merchandising on the selection of core items, timing, and quantity of new and existing product to flow site, and balance of inventory across product categories and product hierarchy to support sales targets and increase inventory turns. 
• Partner with Inventory Deployment & Allocation, Production and Merchants to ensure right levels of inventory are ordered and allocated. 
• Evolve product line architecture as needed and develop pre-season range plans that tie to topline strategies and offer guidance on channel segmentation. 
• Partner with Finance and Merchants to develop seasonal margin targets and work closely to drive for margin improvements. 
• Create short- and long-term product assortment strategies for in partnership with Merchandising that align with the Brand vision, financial plan targets and customer experience goals, full-price and off-price product. 
• Participate in costing reviews and report on margin updates throughout the product development process. 
• Elevate in-season performance management cross marketplace units to drive productive conversation and key gate decision-making to hit business goals. 
• Partner with Production and Raw Material Planning teams to review pre-season key program and fabric platforming to ensure never-out-of-stock on core essentials. 
• Work closely with the Finance team to support accurate business forecasting and areas that can be leveraged to achieve optimal inventory levels and maximize profitability. 
• Demonstrates effective working relationships, building strong partnerships and influencing cross functional leaders and teams including Merchandising, Production, Product Development, and Finance. 
• Drive planning process improvements, standardizations, and best practices aligned to accommodate complexities of the business. 

Who you are:

• 12+ years of analytical experience in merchandise planning or inventory management 
• 7+ years of experience directly leading teams. 
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent years of experience preferred. 
• A hands-on, results-driven mentality combined with a high desire to work strategically Working knowledge of Retail Metrics (Sales, Inventory, Sell Through, Weeks of Supply, Trend based forecasting, revenue and margin), and the ability to develop scenario plans to drive enterprise decisions. 
• A deep understanding of how to use data to drive decisions. 
• Comfort with ambiguity and passion/excitement for building new tools and processes. 
• Proven examples of “thinking outside the box” to improve processes. 
• Demonstrated retail math and business acumen, including elements of markup, margin planning, selling and inventory productivity measures. 
• High level of conceptual creative ability. Strong product sense with proven experience in driving product assortments and partnering with divisional leaders to lead investment strategies that drive business. 
• Passionate self-starter, decisive and able to move with speed to implement ideas. 
• Excited by moving fast, investing deeply in relationships, and working through ambiguity within a startup environment. 
• Excellent leadership, communication, and organizational skills and proven track record of building and coaching teams. 

Our investment in you:

At Vuori, we’re proud to offer the following to our employees: 

• Health Insurance 
• Savings and Retirement Plan  
• Employee Assistance Program 
• Generous Vuori Discount & Industry Perks 
• Paid Time Off  
• Wellness & Fitness benefits  

The salary range for this role is $170,000 per year - $200,000 per year. This role is bonus eligible. 

Vuori is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.  

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.