Merchandise Financial, Strategic and Assortment Planning
- Maximize sales and profitability for the department/category
- Support in determining high-level financial goals including pre-season financial plans, in-season projections, open-to-buy management and new store budgets
- Prepare and maintain department/category merchandise MIS analytics based on actual sales, sales forecasts, company order parameters, inventory checks, forth coming events, replenishment needs etc
- Assist in the creation of merchandise plans for the category based on insights gained from merchandise analytics, customer preference, historical trends and future outlook projected by the buyer
- Assist in discussing, deciding and freezing the department/category merchandise strategic plans around the following factors
- Financials - Sales, Stock, OTB, Margins, Forward Cover etc
- Store - Sub-group level sales, Order Quantity, Allocation, Replenishment etc
- Assortment - Style, Price, Brand, Supplier etc
- Communicate the merchandise strategic plan to buying team for necessary execution
- Ensure effective in season management across territories (stock balancing, markdown management, stock analysis, stock vs sales performance)
- Help review the merchandise plans on a periodic basis to ensure profit is maximized and maintained to reach target levels
- Ensure that the standards of Merchandise procedures and Methodologies are maintained and kept Uniform
Inventory Stock Optimization
- Ensure optimum category inventory levels are maintained at Concept/Territory keeping in mind store requirements as well as working capital constraints
- Ensure that no instances of category stock outs occur on account of any discrepancy on part of merchandise planning
- Ensure excess category inventory is not maintained at the warehouses or the stores and there is proper adherence to the concept/territory ageing policy
Category Promotions
- Provide inputs on the expected margins, possible price points and other parameters for promotions within the product category
- Help analyze the effectiveness of the promotions in achieving the targeted levels of sales and margins
- Help analyze the existing stock levels and liaise with the Buying/VM/Marketing team for timely roll out of promotional campaigns to maintain the territory / warehouse inventory holding norms as well to achieve targeted sales
In-season Management
- Ensure performance is monitored against plan for the assigned category/department, regularly supported by exception reporting
- Ensure effective in season management of the assigned category/department through regular analysis and action planning across concept and territory, based on the performance around the following anchors
- Sales vs. Stock
- Inflows/OTB
- Stock analysis
- Stock balancing
- Margin analysis
