Planner, Merchandise

The Vitamin Shoppe•Secaucus, NJ

20h

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. This position ensures inventory levels support baseline and promotional demand, corporate initiatives, and financial objectives, while delivering strong in-stocks, healthy turns, and controlled risk. Partnering 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. This role serves as a critical link between merchant strategy and operational execution and requires a detail-oriented, logical, and results-driven thinker who can model scenarios, influence partners, and drive disciplined inventory decisions.

Requirements

Establish disciplined planning routines, KPIs, and performance tracking.
Influence without authority through credibility, insight, and data-driven recommendations.
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, preferably Relex.
Experience working with large data sets and BI tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, SQL).
Strong business acumen with the ability to connect data to financial outcomes.
Excellent communication skills
Bachelor’s degree in finance, Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Supply Chain Management, or equivalent combination of intellectual instruction and work experience.

Responsibilities

Responsible for the management of the Open to Buy for area of scope, appropriately allocating spend to drive sales and customer growth.
Own SKU and location level demand forecasting using historical sales, trend analysis, seasonality.
Review and maintain inventory models in Relex to optimize weeks of supply, safety stock, and replenishment parameters.
Analyze forecast accuracy, bias, and error; 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, and obsolescence.
Own receipts forecasts for accurate replenishment and quickly adjust to support trends, priorities, and business needs.
Effectively balance owned brands vs. third party inventory levels based on promotional activity, availability, cost opportunity, and category strategies.
Closely collaborate with cross-functional partners on new item launches, category refreshes, and end to end lifecycle management.
Responsible for purchase order issuance and management
Monitor daily and weekly KPIs including in-stock %, 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 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 influence assortment, depth, and lifecycle decisions using data insights.
Present clear, concise insights to leadership, translating complex data into actionable recommendations.
Leverage Relex (planning system), 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.