Director, Demand Planning - Target

MGA Entertainment, Inc.•Minneapolis, MN

4d•Onsite

About The Position

MGA Entertainment is hiring a Director of Demand Planning to own the Target account, which is MGA's largest revenue account in the Americas at $221M in FY2026 and its fastest-growing. This role is not a back-office forecasting position; it involves negotiating a collaborative forecast with Target, managing the demand plan, inventory position, safety-stock commitments, and maintaining operational credibility with Target's teams. The position is based in Minneapolis, requiring in-person collaboration with MGA's Target sales organization and Target's teams to address critical issues like aligning in-stock expectations, landing event codes, integrating MGA's available-to-sell inventory, and establishing a formal domestic safety-stock policy.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Business, Analytics, Economics or a related field.
8+ years in demand planning, supply chain, merchandise planning or replenishment, including 3+ years leading a major national retail account.
Direct experience owning a collaborative or joint forecast with a major US mass retailer — Target, Walmart, Amazon or equivalent. Target experience strongly preferred.
Demonstrated ownership of an account at $150M+ in annual revenue, with accountability for revenue delivery, in-stock, forecast accuracy and inventory position.
Strong command of retailer POS data and replenishment mechanics: sell-through, weeks of supply, in-stock, store counts, initial sets versus replenishment, and import versus domestic order flow.
Advanced Excel; working fluency in Power BI or an equivalent BI platform.
Proven ability to hold a position with a customer and with internal executives — this role is negotiated as much as it is calculated.
Based in, or willing to relocate to, the Minneapolis, MN metro area. This position works on-site.

Nice To Haves

Toy, consumer products, seasonal or entertainment-driven categories, where demand is short-lifecycle, hit-driven and hard to forecast from history.
Experience standing up planning process where none existed, rather than only operating an established one.
Familiarity with Logility, SAP, or comparable demand planning systems.
Experience with domestic safety-stock strategy and vendor-managed or collaboratively-planned inventory.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end demand plan for US-Target and Target.com across the full MGA brand portfolio — preseason, in-season, and chase.
Own delivery of the Target revenue plan — approximately $221M in FY2026 — against the annual number and against each monthly lock, including conversion of the uncovered balance during the peak shipping window.
Deliver forecast accuracy at brand and item grain, not just account total. Reduce gross brand-level variance to the 90-day lock and eliminate the offsetting errors that make account-level accuracy misleading.
Own the monthly forecast call and the shipment plan that supports it, including the seasonal peak in which September and October shipments carry November–December holiday sell-through.
Partner with Supply Planning and Hong Kong operations to convert the demand plan into production and inventory commitments, and to manage exposure when the plan moves.
Own MGA's side of the collaborative forecast with Target — building, defending, and reconciling the joint plan with Target's replenishment and merchandising teams.
Negotiate and align the in-stock success measure between MGA and Target, closing the gap between Target's 78–82% goal and MGA's 90% standard.
Represent MGA Demand Planning in Operations Top-to-Top meetings and in day-to-day joint business planning.
Hold a sub-24-hour response standard on Target requests and drive purchase-order and cancellation accuracy to eliminate rework on the customer's side.
Drive Target in-stock from the low 80s to a sustained 88–90%.
Own MGA's domestic safety-stock position for Target, including commitments made above collaborative forecast on key items, and lead development of a formal, supply-supported safety-stock policy to replace item-by-item negotiation.
Manage weeks of supply, chase and cancel decisions, and the trade-off between availability and end-of-season excess.
Adapt planning to Target's later replenishment ordering cycle, which compresses the window between order receipt and required production lead time.
Land the implementation of event codes identifying initial-set and out-of-assortment purchase orders so MGA can separate and track order types accurately.
Drive integration of MGA available-to-sell inventory into Target's Walk-In Purchasability dataset, enabling daily purchase-order writing against real availability.
Use MGA's POS, demand and forecasting tooling — including Power BI semantic models, the ATS tool, and the preseason comp forecast engine — to move from reactive reporting to forward-looking decisions.
Codify Target planning into documented, repeatable process rather than individual knowledge.
Lead and develop dedicated analyst support for the Target account; set standards for accuracy, responsiveness and customer-facing professionalism.
Act as the single accountable point of contact for Target demand planning across MGA Sales, Supply Chain, Finance and Brand.
Escalate clearly and early. Bring options and a recommendation, not just the problem.