Merchandise Planner

Your Opportunity at ARC’TERYX:

As a Merchandise Planner, you build and execute long-term, seasonal, and in-season merchandise planning strategies that support the channel’s financial and consumer objectives. You develop and own inventory strategies for specific product portfolios globally. You balance your decisions based on the Merchant intent, sales forecast, revenue expectations, and supply chain capabilities to support our overall business plan.  You drive the improvement of product availability for an exceptional guest experience, while minimizing excess inventories.

This role is primarily based out of our North Vancouver office and is open to hybrid remote work.  Candidates must be eligible to work in Canada.

Meet Your Future Team:

The Merchandise Planning & Allocation team is a cross functional group whose focus is to continuously drive sales and margin while mitigating inventory risks. We work to find the balance between the right product, at the right quantity, in the right place, at the right time.

• Building top-down multi channel Pre-season merchandise plans by region, market, gender, category that support our Strategic Business Plan (SBP) growth strategies
• Owning the reconciliation of bottoms-up merchandise/buying plans back up to finance budgets
• Partnering with the merchant team to develop and communicate an assortment strategy that considers opportunities by model/SKU, region, gender and category and multi channel opportunities
• Developing and implementing sales solutions for inventory optimization through allocation and markdown recommendations
• Performing in season analyses to ensure that there is enough product available to meet stretch sales targets and merchandise standards, and communicating to the appropriate teams when deviations occur
• Maximizing sales by understanding sales trends and opportunities; planning SKU level assortment and revising in-season plans for sales and profitability while maintaining healthy sell-thru and managing OTB
• Controlling seasonal flow strategies by collaborating with the Allocations Team
• Identifying product opportunities and/or risks with your portfolio and providing recommendations to the inventory and exit strategy team for review and actioning
• Analyzing the historical data, trending information and other available data on product, country, region and channel to develop and maintain an accurate forecast at SKU level by season, period and beyond
• Owning the forecast accuracy and its continuous improvement for the responsible portfolio
• Supporting inventory requirements to achieve revenue expectations targets per region, channel, and order type while minimizing global excess inventory
• Collaborating with the Merchandising Team on future product launch preliminary forecasts
• Working closely with the Commercial team on Key Account business planning for the responsible portfolio/region to generate specific forecasts to support Key Account business growth while controlling inventory risks
• Determining the inventory decisions on the demand plan, as well as the inventory strategy on specific business initiatives; analyzing and presenting the impact of varying demand and supply scenarios on company’s financial goals and providing recommendations
• Collaborating with the Supply Planning team to confirm supply availability to meet demand projections and adjust the forecast as needed in consideration of supply chain constraints while minimizing or eliminating negative business impacts
• Supporting with reporting on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Upholding Fair Labor Association’s Workplace Code of Conduct and Principles of Fair Labor and Responsible Sourcing, throughout the Arc’teryx supply chain

• Participating in merchandise planning improvement projects and initiatives as they arise
• Supporting in streamlining and building efficiencies into the planning process
• Participating in seasonal assortment reviews and leading seasonal buy reviews
• Working closely with other supply chain and product teams on inventory strategies as well as monitoring/tracking various demand planning factors that impact product availability 

• You have a University degree in a relevant subject, or equivalent experience
• You have 3 years of experience in merchandise planning or inventory management in a vertical retail business
• You have previous experience in a Direct-To-Consumer and wholesale capacity (retail or ecommerce)
• You have proven experience creating and analyzing reports and have a high level of comfort working with large quantities of data
• You are a self-starter who takes initiative and ownership of your business
• You are proactive in identifying the root cause of issues and developing solutions
• You have a high level of business acumen
• You have advanced skills in Excel
• You remain highly flexible and adaptable when faced with ambiguity
• You can balance autonomy and collaboration
• You seek the best (but sometimes not the easiest) solutions, with an unwavering commitment to do what is right
• Your passion for your work is paralleled by your passion for getting outside and living it