Director of Planning

Vida Shoes International•New York, NY

11d•Onsite

About The Position

Vida Shoes International is seeking a strategic and analytically driven Director of Planning to lead the end-to-end planning function across our growing portfolio of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. This role is responsible for building and managing Open-to-Buy (OTB), demand forecasting, receipt planning, and inventory strategy across multiple brands and ecommerce channels — ensuring the right product is available at the right time to maximize sales, margin, and inventory efficiency. The ideal candidate is a seasoned planning professional with deep experience in ecommerce-first or digitally native retail environments who has built and scaled planning processes from the ground up, thrives as an individual contributor with broad ownership, and is equally comfortable in Excel-driven financial models as presenting inventory strategies to executive leadership.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive experience in retail merchandise planning, inventory planning, or demand planning — with at least 4+ years in a senior or director-level role, including a proven track record in OTB management, demand forecasting, receipt planning, and size curve development.
Experience planning across a portfolio of multiple brands or business units, with the ability to manage brand-level plans while maintaining visibility at the enterprise level.
Extensive experience in ecommerce planning, with demonstrated ability to plan for digitally native businesses.
Expert-level proficiency in Microsoft Excel — including advanced financial modeling, pivot tables, XLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH, complex scenario analysis, and large-scale data manipulation.
Strong financial acumen with the ability to connect planning decisions to margin, cash flow, and P&L outcomes.
Exceptional analytical, organizational, and communication skills — with the ability to translate data into executive-ready insights and influence cross-functional stakeholders without direct authority.

Nice To Haves

Experience in footwear, fashion, apparel, or consumer goods ecommerce.
Exposure to planning systems such as Anaplan, Oracle Retail, or similar merchandise planning platforms.
Experience with BI tools (Looker, Tableau, Power BI) and comfort extracting and manipulating data from multiple sources.
Familiarity with Shopify or similar ecommerce platforms and their inventory and reporting capabilities is a plus but not required.

Responsibilities

Own and manage the end-to-end OTB process across a growing portfolio of DTC brands, all categories, channels, and seasons — including building, maintaining, and reconciling monthly OTB budgets at both the brand and classification level.
Develop OTB frameworks and tools that balance sales performance, receipt flow, inventory levels, and margin targets.
Lead the demand planning process, translating sales history, trend data, and forward-looking business intelligence into accurate product forecasts — driving cross-functional alignment across buying, merchandising, and finance.
Develop and maintain receipt flow plans that align with OTB, warehouse capacity, and promotional calendars.
Build monthly promotional calendars by brand in partnership with VP of Ecommerce and merchandising team to support inventory flow, receipt timing and demand planning.
Build and refine size curve models informed by historical sell-through, customer data, and market trends.
Build and maintain the seasonal and annual merchandise financial plan in collaboration with finance, buying, and executive leadership.
Produce weekly, monthly, and seasonal performance reporting including sales, margin, inventory, and OTB variance analysis.
Develop scenario models and what-if analyses to inform business decisions around receipt shifts, cancellations, and opportunistic buys.
Present planning performance and strategic recommendations to the VP of Ecommerce and executive team on a regular cadence.
Set and manage inventory targets including weeks of supply, turn goals, and markdown thresholds by category.
Monitor inventory health against OTB plans and make real-time adjustments to reflect business trends, cancellations, or accelerated receipts.
Drive proactive inventory optimization strategies to minimize excess and aged inventory while protecting in-season sales potential.
Lead ecommerce inventory allocation strategy, including site-level availability, digital sell-through analysis, and online demand forecasting — with ecommerce-specific KPIs to monitor sell-through velocity, return rates, and conversion-adjusted demand.
Build planning models that account for digital channel dynamics including seasonal spikes, new product drops, and campaign-driven demand.
Identify inventory risk and opportunity and present actionable recommendations to merchandising partners and senior leadership.
Serve as the primary planning partner to buying/merchandising and ecommerce— building strong cross-functional relationships and ensuring alignment across all planning touchpoints.
Partner with buying and marketing teams to align OTB to strategic assortment priorities and financial plans, and with the ecommerce team to align inventory availability, product launches, and promotional timing with digital marketing and site merchandising strategies.
Establish planning best practices, process standards, and analytical frameworks that can scale with the growing brand portfolio.
Foster a data-driven planning culture and act as an internal resource and thought leader on inventory strategy and financial planning.