Senior Merchandise Planner
Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Experience: 5–8 years
About the Company
A growing fashion retail organization managing branded merchandise across stores and wholesale partners. The organization combines commercial planning, buying, inventory management, pricing, and store execution to maximize sales, profitability, and customer relevance across its product portfolio. Teams work across brand, department, class, sub-class, and item levels, using structured financial plans and performance reporting to guide decisions. The business values disciplined open-to-buy management, accurate stock visibility, timely product launches, and responsive in-season action. Its operating model connects planners, buyers, management teams, warehouses, stores, and wholesale partners around shared commercial targets. This role joins a hands-on retail environment where analysis is expected to translate into clear assortment choices, healthy stock positions, improved sell-through, and stronger margins. The organization is seeking a commercially minded planner who can balance strategic seasonal planning with detailed weekly execution, identify exceptions early, and influence stakeholders toward actions that improve financial and inventory outcomes.
About the Role
Own merchandise financial planning and in-season performance management for assigned brands and categories. You will translate commercial strategy into seasonal budgets, assortment and range plans, open-to-buy controls, allocation decisions, and pricing actions. Through WSSI, post-season analysis, store grading, replenishment reviews, and weekly performance reporting, you will protect sales, margins, availability, and stock productivity. The role partners closely with Buyers and management to identify exceptions, reforecast plans, manage markdown exposure, and ensure product launches and replenishment reach stores and wholesale partners on time. Success means stronger plan accuracy, healthier forward cover, fewer stock-outs, improved sell-through, and commercially disciplined inventory decisions.
Key Responsibilities
- Own annual budgets, seasonal strategies, and open-to-buy plans across brand, department, class, sub-class, and item levels, aligning sales, margin, markdown, stock, inflow, and forward-cover targets with approved commercial strategy.
- Build WSSI plans and performance reports that compare actual results with plan, expose sales, stock, inflow, and cover exceptions, and trigger timely corrective actions through weekly Buyer and department reviews.
- Partner with Buyers to convert strategic objectives into seasonal range and buy plans, balancing quantities, options, store capacity, assortment grades, financial parameters, and customer requirements across medium and small stores.
- Manage inventory availability by reviewing replenishment orders, warehouse receipts, store allocations, launch readiness, consolidation opportunities, ageing stock, and wholesale distribution to reduce stock-outs and improve productive stock deployment.
- Control sell-through, markdown, promotion, and end-of-season activity by analysing product performance, recommending price adjustments, and securing management approval for actions that protect margin and clear slow-moving inventory.
- Maintain open-to-buy visibility by tracking orders, cancellations, excesses, underbuys, reforecasts, and monthly inflows, ensuring management has reliable information for financial and inventory decisions.
- Conduct store and competitor visits to assess product performance, range composition, price positioning, customer needs, and store-specific requirements, converting observations into measurable planning and assortment actions.
- Strengthen planning systems and reporting by protecting data integrity, identifying system gaps, and communicating enhancement requirements that improve performance measurement, decision speed, and operational control.
Essential Skills & Technologies
- Strong merchandise planning and retail analytics capability, including annual budgets, seasonal strategies, WSSI, open-to-buy, assortment planning, sell-through, forward cover, markdown, and margin management.
- Advanced analytical and organisational skills with the ability to interpret performance by department, class, sub-class, item, store, season, and product lifecycle, then recommend commercially sound actions.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel-based planning, reporting, financial tracking, and scenario analysis; familiarity with retail merchandise planning or ERP systems is valuable.
Additional Plus
- Postgraduate qualification such as an MBA in Retail Management, or specialist training from NIFT, Pearl Academy, or a comparable fashion and retail institution.
- Experience planning fashion retail brands across stores and wholesale partners, including store grading, replenishment, product launches, allocation, promotions, and end-of-season activity.
- Practical understanding of customer, competitor, and store-level product trends, with the confidence to challenge assumptions and influence Buyers, management, warehouse teams, and stores.
What You'll Bring
- You bring 5–8 years of relevant merchandise planning experience within fashion retail, with ownership of budgets, assortment strategies, inventory plans, open-to-buy controls, and in-season performance management across meaningful commercial categories.
- You combine strong commercial judgement with detailed analytical discipline. You can move from brand-level financial targets to class, sub-class, item, store, and product decisions while protecting sales, margin, availability, stock productivity, and customer relevance.
- You are an effective cross-functional partner for Buyers, management, warehouse teams, stores, and wholesale partners. You communicate exceptions clearly, secure decisions, and follow actions through until plans are implemented and measurable outcomes improve.
- You are organised, proactive, and comfortable working in a fast-moving retail environment. You maintain accurate trackers and reports, investigate data or system issues, and use store visits, competitor observations, and performance evidence to sharpen recommendations.
Why Join Us
This is an opportunity to own the commercial engine behind fashion retail performance, connecting strategic merchandise planning with the daily decisions that shape sales, margin, availability, and inventory productivity. You will work across the full planning cycle, from annual budgets and seasonal strategies through range plans, buy plans, launches, replenishment, markdowns, and post-season learning. The role offers meaningful visibility with Buyers and management because your analysis will directly inform financial commitments, product choices, pricing actions, and stock deployment. You will also influence how stores and wholesale partners execute the plan, creating a clear link between recommendations and customer-facing results. The environment suits a planner who wants breadth, accountability, and practical commercial impact rather than a narrow reporting remit. By improving plan accuracy, reacting earlier to exceptions, and turning performance insight into disciplined action, you can help the organization grow profitably while building stronger planning standards and more effective cross-functional ways of working.
What We Offer
- Broad ownership across financial planning, assortment, inventory, pricing, allocation, and in-season management, giving you a complete view of the fashion retail commercial cycle.
- Direct exposure to Buyers, management, stores, warehouses, and wholesale partners, with the opportunity to influence decisions that visibly affect sales, margin, availability, and stock productivity.
- A commercially hands-on environment where rigorous analysis, accurate systems, store insight, and timely action are valued as essential levers for sustainable retail performance.
