Inventory Merchandiser, Allocation Planner

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United Kingdom, +2 more countries.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the initial stock allocation for five stores and e-commerce, considering demand, historical performance, current trading conditions, size requirements, and store capacity.

• Provide essential assortment and intake planning signals to the Product and Buying teams.

• Facilitate replenishment processes and pinpoint where fast-selling products require additional stock or should be safeguarded or redirected.

• Suggest inter-store stock transfers to address issues of understock, overstock, and broken availability.

• Oversee store capacity planning.

• Keep track of size and SKU-level availability, identifying broken size curves and missing core sizes.

• Analyze sell-through rates, weeks of cover, stock turnover, sales velocity, and aging stock.

• Maintain the regular weekly inventory merchandising rhythm.

• Generate prioritized actions for allocation, replenishment, transfers, and store capacity, including reorder, hold, do-not-reorder signals, and exceptions requiring follow-up.

• Manage stock-action queues and coordinate execution with Warehouse Operations and Retail.

• Enhance stock productivity across both physical retail and e-commerce platforms.

• Operate, quality assure, and interrogate the existing inventory model.

• Identify exceptions or weaknesses in the model and collaborate with the Founder and Business Systems & Technology Operations to enhance decision-making logic.

• Report directly to the Founder/CEO and work alongside Product/Buying, Retail, E-commerce, Warehouse, Head of Business Operations, and Business Systems & Technology Operations.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive hands-on experience in inventory merchandising.

• Background in assortment, option, or range planning, including the ability to translate category performance and capacity into intake recommendations.

• Experience in store capacity planning.

• Proven experience in multi-store stock allocation.

• Ownership experience in replenishment processes.

• Familiarity with inter-store stock balancing.

• Experience with sell-through, stock cover, and stock turn analyses.

• Competence in managing size/SKU-level availability.

• Skill in converting analysis into actionable commercial stock decisions.

• Experience in both physical retail and e-commerce environments.

• Competence in managing overstock, understock, and aging inventory.

• Ability to make informed merchandising decisions despite incomplete or conflicting data.

• High proficiency in working directly with large, formula-driven Excel models.

• Skill in navigating complex workbooks, tracing and comprehending formulas, distinguishing between raw inputs, calculated fields, and manual overrides, as well as using lookups, pivots, filters, and conditional logic, troubleshooting formula or output issues, and safely maintaining existing models.

• Comfort in utilizing, understanding, interrogating, and enhancing an established operating model.

• Preference for candidates with fashion or apparel experience.

• Candidates from closely comparable multi-store specialty retail backgrounds may be considered if they possess exceptionally strong allocation, replenishment, capacity, SKU-level, and omnichannel experience.

• Must be available to work primarily within UK business hours, Monday to Friday, from 9 am to 5:30 pm UK time.

🏝️ Benefits

• Flexible remote or offshore work arrangements.

• Opportunity to collaborate with an independent fashion retailer and a growing e-commerce business.

• Direct engagement with the Founder/CEO and cross-functional teams.

• Chance to enhance proprietary merchandising systems and inventory decision-making logic.