Associate Planner - Center Core (Outlets)

About

Bloomingdale's makes fashion personal and fun, aspirational yet approachable. Our mission is to guide and inspire our customers to make style a source of creative energy in their lives. We will always strive to make Bloomingdale's like no other store in the world. Everyone plays a critical role to bring our mission to life. Regardless of position, we believe all colleagues have a voice and access to share their thoughts with every level of leadership. Our colleagues are passionate, driven, entrepreneurial and collaborative. We welcome and embrace diversity of background, thought and opinion while having a lot of fun along the way.

Job Overview

Through our carefully curated selection of merchandise, we guide and inspire our customers to make style a creative source of energy in their lives. To help us consistently meet our customer demands, our Planning team uses analytics to develop localized strategies that maximize sales. The Associate Planner partners closely with the Director of Planning to develop location-specific financial plans and recommend strategies for core vendor plans for an assigned area of business. In this role, you will manage a total business throughout the season, including evaluating and reacting to sales activity and trends, managing location inventory levels and replenishment, and driving sales, margin, and turn across stores and online channels. Leveraging analytics and intuition, you will ensure that the right products are available in the right place at the right time, consistently meeting our customers' expectations while achieving sales and profitability for your assigned business. To reach our financial goals, you will also ensure that the financial strategy supports national and localized assortments by store and channel with appropriate receipt and inventory levels. Our ideal candidate is highly analytical and strategic, a strong collaborator, and can skillfully balance multiple projects while being agile in response to changing priorities.

Essential Functions

• Provide independent and strategic recommendations to drive business outcomes
• Execute pre-season financial planning activities for a specific business unit, including creation of all department and vendor plans, VMT's, and daily sales and forecast plans
• Provide the Buyer with analytics and recommendations to support assortment decisions by channel and location
• Leverage analytics to guide merchants on strategies to drive opportunities and minimize risks for vendors
• Attend vendor meetings that relate to the planning function in order to negotiate location/ strategy plans; advocate for location distribution of brands, items, and expanded replenishment offering
• Perform quarterly hindsight analysis to inform future strategy
• Create pre-season daily sales plan by department and channel based on marketing calendar, holiday shifts, markdown, and promotion cadence
• Forecast daily sales and stocks by channel and location to support the ROF process
• Allocate product orders to maximize business by channel and location
• Where appropriate, determine fixture plans and capacities by door and brand, manage inventory levels to fulfill customer needs, and balance fixture needs with business needs
• Perform other duties as assigned

Qualifications and Competencies

• Bachelors Degree
• 2-3 years Relevant analytical experience

Communication Skills

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to read, write, and interpret documents such as reports and procedure manuals

Mathematical Skills

• Minimum of average mathematical skills, including the ability to compute rates, ratios and percentages

Reasoning Ability

• Highly analytical, strategic, and able to identify data trends and present risks and opportunities.
• Ability to manage workflow independently and effectively with minimal direction

Other Skills

• Demonstrated ability to balance multiple projects and be flexible in response to changing priorities
• Highly self-motivated with a proactive approach to work responsibilities
• Strong team player who leverages others to make better decisions
• Strong PC skills, particularly Excel (i.e. v-lookups, pivot tables, sumifs)
• Ability to influence and collaborate effectively with cross-functional partners

Essential Physical Requirements

• This position involves regular walking, standing, hearing, and talking.
• May occasionally involve stooping, kneeling, or crouching

This job description is not all inclusive; additionally, Macy's, Inc. reserves the right to amend this job description at any time. Macy's, Inc. - including Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Bluemercury - is an equal opportunity employer, committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment.