Merchandise Job Description
Merchandise Duties & Responsibilities
To write an effective merchandise job description, begin by listing detailed duties, responsibilities and expectations. We have included merchandise job description templates that you can modify and use.
Sample responsibilities for this position include:
Merchandise Qualifications
Qualifications for a job description may include education, certification, and experience.
Education for Merchandise
Typically a job would require a certain level of education.
Employers hiring for the merchandise job most commonly would prefer for their future employee to have a relevant degree such as Bachelor's and Collage Degree in Business, Merchandising, Finance, Marketing, Education, Technical, Management, MBA, Economics, Business/Administration
Skills for Merchandise
Desired skills for merchandise include:
Desired experience for merchandise includes:
Merchandise Examples
Merchandise Job Description
- Manage, coach and develop Assistant and Junior Planners
- Provide weekly summary of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within departments of responsibility, relating to sales, stock, profit, and markdown versus budget/last year
- Provide analysis and summary of Markdown and Promotional activity for departments of responsibility
- Pro-actively manage and control departments in line with trade activity to minimise risks and maximise opportunities for monthly and seasonal KPIs
- Manage intake flow into business to hit monthly forecasts, drive sales and minimise risks
- Review and present in season stock opportunities and risks in line with forecasts to maximise sales and reduce stocks OTB management, cancellations
- Working with Upload Planners to forecast adequate upload levels in line with sales budgets / re-forecasts
- Suggest in season tactical actions to ensure departments hit KPI’s – Financial Budgets for Sales, Sell Through, Closing Stock
- Key contact for all analysis and conclusions relating to departments of responsibility
- Conduct detailed ad-hoc and pro-active analytical analysis relating to all KPI’s and dependants
- Must have an excellent command of retail math concepts, applications, and statistical analysis
- Must be highly attentive to detail due to the nature of the job being predominately numbers based
- Must have excellent written and verbal communication skills to facilitate resolution of allocation issues and to interact with all level of employees
- Must have a strong analytical acumen and skill set, including the ability to recognize trends and patterns within a large and complex data set
- Bachelor Degree with miminum of 5 years experience as a Planner in fashion retail merchandising, preferably within multi-brand environment
- Design inventory strategies that balance the composition of new, replenishment and evergreen merchandise and support in-stock and turn objectives
Merchandise Job Description
- Successfully process, predict and analyze product demand
- Maintain and update special category and product curves as needed
- Manage new product minimum order requirements
- Collaborate with the Merchant to create exit strategies when replacing existing inventory with new items
- Increase per cap and penetration through placement of key drivers
- Create weekly and monthly sales reports as directed by Visual Director
- Analyze the sales of each floor change and communicate results
- Monitor the sales of top selling programs
- Directs hourly team member in implementation of floor plans and sku to fixture plans
- Provides analysis of sales contributions on the sku, program and department level
- Minimum 3 years retail, wholesale or visual merchandising experience
- Expert knowledge of MS Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint
- Must be able to lift and transport up to 25 pounds
- 90% local travel to visit stores
- Must have 2+ years of relevant work experience in allocation or inventory analysis, preferably in the retail industry
- Must have an adequate analytical acumen and skill set, including the ability to recognize trends and patterns within a large and complex data set
Merchandise Job Description
- Create, maintain, and adjust Sales, Gross Margin, and Inventory Forecasts/Open to Buy
- Plan, measure, and implement actions to improve Seasonal SellThru
- Create and maintain "Key Item" plans on strategically important items
- Build close relationships with supplier counterparts to ensure a continuity of supply and to minimise failed deliveries through effective management and progress chasing
- Have an awareness of exit and aged stocks and manage in line with the company policy and update the team with the relevant information
- Good knowledge of MS Office, in particular Excel
- Excellent numerical and analytical skills to review data and provide recommendations/actions / plans to drive sales, profit and cash
- A degree in a Mathematical/analytical discipline
- To be a highly motivated team player with strong relationship building skills
- Daily responsibilities include the frequent use of tools such as SPSS Clementine (data mining), APT Test Learn (financial reporting), Excel (other reporting) and PLSQL (proprietary algorithm development)
- Experience leading a planning team
- Proficiency in other Microsoft Office products- Word, PowerPoint, Outlook
- Excellent analytical and mathematical proficiency with strong business and financial acumen
- Minimum of 3-5-years experience in inventory management and overseeing planning at an item level within a large specialty retailer (300+ stores)
- Strong analytical skills, proficient with planning systems
- Bachelor’s Degree in Merchandising, Business, Marketing, or related degree, or equivalent business experience
Merchandise Job Description
- Perform all ad hoc reporting and analysis for sales, margin, receipt and inventory opportunities and risks at the Store/ Department or Class level
- Perform Same Store Sales analysis at the Department or Class level to help identify sales trends
- Managing in-season processes to maximize financial outcomes for the season, including repositioning of pricing and the Open to Buy process
- Use of SQL, PL/SQL and VBA to generate specific reporting and provide actionable business insights as required by Merchandising
- 40% - Manages all product information for assigned merchandising category
- 10% - Works on behalf of merchant to identify, quantify, and communicate assortment opportunities
- Monitor weekly performance and make recommendations for activity to ensure successful in season execution
- Ensure promotional activity products are correctly sold via specific channels with correct promotional pricing
- Track OTIF and resolve issues
- Own category KPI’s for Sales, Stock, Margin and Markdown
- Commercial awareness and a passion for retail
- Focus on financial analysis and building budgets to meet planning, goals and sales targets
- Re-forecasting and monitoring merchandise plans to support the Global Finance calendar
- Collaborate with other Planners to ensure Category Sales plans align to Item forecasting
- Requires high proficiency with Oracle, JDA or similar planning tool
- Research comparative prices for items ordered
Merchandise Job Description
- Processes digital photos using photo imaging programs
- Communicate with vendors on quote sheets and sample requests
- Track shipments and estimated time of arrival
- Organize product sample
- Develop / implement strategies to create vendor pre-packs based on pack configuration analysis
- Prepare weekly / monthly review of item sales and inventory results
- Collaborate with planner and buyer to review assortment flow plan and ensure sufficient quantities are purchased to support the assortment plan
- In conjunction with the Buyers for the assigned departments of responsibility, prepare a thorough sales plan for the season ahead
- Review Arthur for departments of responsibility on an on-going basis, incorporating other reporting tools to analyze current and historic sales performance
- Ensure the Associate Merchandiser is identifying both slow and fast moving lines, advise on prompt assertive action , cancelling orders, markdowns, promotions, method of transport and phasing of orders
- Minimum three years’ recent business experience in a related planning function
- Experience with Microsoft Office Suite, especially Microsoft Excel
- Manage OTB on a weekly basis in conjunction with the Buyer for the assigned departments
- Prepare a re-forecast of sales, OTB, stock and markdown activity for the Arthur review meeting
- Responsible for presenting a review of the performance figures for the assigned departments of responsibility
- Use of SAS Enterprise Miner or SPSS Modeler to create predictive models, unsupervised learning explorations