Vice President, Planning

kindthread

About The Position

As the Vice President, Planning for Kindthread, you will play a pivotal role in establishing and overseeing the planning and allocation functions across our Retail, E-Commerce, and Wholesale channels. Your leadership will be instrumental in shaping a unified, customer-focused approach that drives global revenue and profitability. You will oversee planning, financial forecasting, and inventory optimization, to ensure maximum sales performance and operational efficiency across all consumer touchpoints. Additionally, you will play a key role in defining and evolving the planning systems and tools that enable scalable, data-driven decision-making across the organization.

Requirements

15+ years of retail planning and analysis experience
Proficiency in Microsoft Excel and strong analytical skills
Excellent understanding of retail math and organizational abilities
Ability to multitask, prioritize, and adapt to evolving business needs
Quick reactivity and agility to address requests and ever-evolving business needs
Strong team player with the ability to work with many cross-functional teams
Strong communication and interpersonal skills, both verbal and written, including the ability to interact confidently with senior executives
Experience leading or supporting ERP and planning system implementations, including defining business requirements and cross-functional collaboration

Responsibilities

Develop, align, and publish daily/weekly/monthly/annual sales plans with Merchandising and Channel Executives, ensuring cohesion and alignment with financial targets
Reforecast annual sales plans for Retail and E-Commerce monthly based on current sales trends
Analyze daily/weekly reporting on Business Performance, including qualitative comments on key drivers, risks, and opportunities
Analyze by-door performance at a style and SKU level and prepare weekly recommendations of stock movements
Define, prepare, and track seasonal and carryover open-to-buys to support HQ in the creation of seasonal OTBs
Create, maintain, and revise as needed core ladder plans to ensure appropriate inventory levels to support all channels of business
Assist in defining annual and seasonal budgets for the wholesale team, ensuring alignment with financial targets
Reforecast each month based on shipping trends, cancellations, reorders, off-price, etc
Support the wholesale team to manage Replenishment Program on Carry-Over Best Sellers
Partner with Sales to create seasonal by-door budget projections
Develop, update, and analyze various reports to monitor global business performance, including, but not limited to: Weekly selling reports (collection performance, by style selling), Chase and replenishment reports, Liquidation and inventory reports
Draw conclusions and build action plans for both short term and long-term business growth
Strategically build a best-in-class chase and replenishment program for the global business
Manage stock from initial allocation through the end-of-life cycle of merchandise, including: Overseeing global inventory levels based on store capacity, attributes, seasonality, and selling curves. Developing a strategy for liquidation of aged stock via sample sales and off-priced distributors. Prepare weekly reports to leadership to ensure visibility and understanding of sales trends and stock positions. Providing data and insights to merchandising to support decisions made around the product lifecycle - this includes suggested markdown vs. carryover styles
Defining financial impact of stock decisions
Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including merchandising, ecommerce, and IT, to create best-in-class data management and classifications for consistent and accurate analysis of the global business
Responsible for meeting stock coverage targets and optimizing inventory levels across channels
Partner with other departments to anticipate risks and implement mitigation strategies
Lead the definition of business requirements for best-in-class planning, allocation, and ERP systems to support future growth
Partner with IT and cross-functional stakeholders to evaluate, select, and implement scalable system solutions
Ensure systems enable accurate forecasting, real-time visibility, and efficient inventory management
Drive continuous improvement through process optimization, automation, and data integrity enhancements
Act as the business owner throughout system implementations, including testing, training, and change management