Planner, Merchandise

The Vitamin Shoppe•Secaucus, NJ

About The Position

The Merchandise Planner is a highly analytical, cross-functional role responsible for developing and executing inventory strategies that optimize availability, investment, and productivity across the business. The position ensures inventory levels support baseline and promotional demand, corporate initiatives, and financial objectives while delivering strong in-stocks, healthy turns, and controlled risk. Working closely with Merchandising, Private Brand, Supply Chain, Analytics, and vendor teams, the Merchandise Planner translates demand signals and financial targets into actionable, data-driven plans that balance opportunity with investment. The role links merchant strategy with operational execution and calls for a detail-oriented, logical, results-driven thinker who can model scenarios, influence partners, and drive disciplined inventory decisions.

Requirements

4–6+ years of inventory, merchandise, or supply chain planning experience.
Advanced analytical skills with strong statistical and quantitative reasoning.
Expert-level Excel skills.
Experience with forecasting and inventory planning systems; Relex is preferred.
Experience working with large data sets and BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, or SQL.
Strong business acumen and ability to connect data to financial outcomes.
Excellent communication skills.
Ability to establish disciplined planning routines, KPIs, and performance tracking.
Ability to influence without authority through credibility, insight, and data-driven recommendations.
Bachelor’s degree in finance, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, or Supply Chain Management, or an equivalent combination of intellectual instruction and work experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Relex forecasting and inventory planning systems.
Experience with BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, or SQL.

Responsibilities

Manage Open to Buy for the assigned area, allocating spend to drive sales and customer growth.
Own SKU- and location-level demand forecasting using historical sales, trend analysis, and seasonality.
Review and maintain inventory models in Relex to optimize weeks of supply, safety stock, and replenishment parameters.
Analyze forecast accuracy, bias, and error, and continuously refine assumptions and inputs.
Develop inventory scenarios to support financial planning, growth strategies, and risk mitigation.
Translate sales, margin, and receipt plans into executable inventory strategies.
Perform root-cause analysis on in-stock issues, excess inventory, and obsolescence.
Own receipts forecasts for accurate replenishment and adjust them to support trends, priorities, and business needs.
Balance owned-brand and third-party inventory levels based on promotional activity, availability, cost opportunity, and category strategies.
Collaborate with cross-functional partners on new item launches, category refreshes, and end-to-end lifecycle management.
Issue and manage purchase orders.
Monitor daily and weekly KPIs, including in-stock percentage, weeks of supply, inventory turns, sell-through, and aging.
Identify risks and opportunities early through exception-based reporting.
Recommend data-backed actions such as rebalancing, flow optimization, markdown timing, or receipt adjustments.
Partner with the Commercialization team to manage lead times, vendor performance, and inventory flow constraints.
Collaborate with leadership to align inventory plans with sales, margin forecasts, and overall OTB metrics.
Support Private Brand processes with clear analytics, assumptions, and scenario modeling.
Partner with Merchandising to inform assortment, depth, and lifecycle decisions using data insights.
Present clear, concise insights to leadership and translate complex data into actionable recommendations.
Use Relex, BI tools, and data platforms to drive insight and efficiency.
Identify opportunities to automate reporting, forecasting inputs, and decision workflows.
Partner with Relex Super User and IT teams to enhance data quality, forecasting logic, and model performance.
Support adoption of advanced analytics, predictive models, and machine learning capabilities.