In Season Trader

Purpose:
The In-Season Planner will act as a trusted member of the Planning and Allocation team to support brand/category E2E strategy and vision. He/she will use strong analytical skills and commercial knowledge of the Southern market to manage in season trading activities to reflect latest business performance into the trading plan on all product categories (apparel, accessories and licensees). He/she will be able to identify key business issues, provide analysis on opportunity and risk in the business, and make recommendations to drive revenues in stores. This role will collaborate closely with District managers, Merchants, and inventory management to optimize in season stock management and will be accountable to drive in season commercial decisions.

Additionally, the In-Season Trader will be responsible to support and drive the expanded VMI operations on Wholesale Key Accounts (Tradeinn and Intersport).

Key Results:

- South cluster Merchandise Planning Performance
- Store-level Inventory Management Performance

Scope:

- Levi’s Brand - All categories (apparel, accessories and licensees)
- South cluster concession and Wholesale VMI accounts

Key Responsibilities:

- Conduct quantitative analysis and insights to optimize inventory deployment - monetize new opportunities and identify risks and formulate recommendations.
- Manage in-season profitability to achieve or exceed seasonal performance at Geo / Category level
- Drive in season commercial decisions to maximize revenue
- Manage markdown activities; identify products to go on sale and define level of discount
- Develop accurate inventory flow forecasts that support in season business strategies
- Highlight Store to store transfer opportunities
- Identify opportunities in store to clean Excess inventory
- Attend weekly retail meetings to align on trading activities
- Collaborate with Retail Merchandising to reassess in season performance, leverage key learnings into in season trading actions and reflect into next season assortment buy
- Communicate weekly in season trading actions to cross functional partners and act as first point of contact
- Define in season allocation strategies to optimize inventory for key peak periods
- Monitor product availability in European warehouses to identify product opportunities in order to drive local commercial initiatives
- Collaborate with planner to review store grading/max capacities
- Regularly visit retail stores to gather market intelligence and reflect key take outs into in season trading actions
- Manage allocation parameters and weekly orders for expanded VMI accounts (Tradeinn and Intersport).
- Align with Merch Planner on the products to activate on VMI and their phasing

**Education**:

- Bachelor’s degree in Retail Management, Business management or Finance

**Experience**:

- 3 to 5 years of work experience in Retail business (preferably in planning or allocation)

Specialized Knowledge/Technical Skills:

- Strong analytical skills to interpret meaningful themes from quantitative data
- Strong understanding of Retail revenue drivers
- Ability to articulate key performance indicators, and how they are used in key systems/tools.
- Highly proficient with Microsoft Excel

Decision Making and Problem solving:

- Ability to problem solve independently & through strong partnerships with regional business partners
- Ability to analyze and assess impact of decisions on department and cross-functional business partners.
- Proactively identify business issues and develop creative solutions.
- Ability to excel in an environment without extensive resources and with high ambiguity
- Self-motivated, actively takes initiative to learn and drive the business
- Ability to build constructive and effective relationships with a broad, diverse group of business partners, mainly the cross-functional team
- English fluent, spoken and written
- Ability to influence cross-functional partners
- Strong interpersonal skills and proven ability to work with diverse teams.
- Ability to adjust communication style in order to provide information and direction in an effective manner

Primarily works in an office environment.
- Will be required for travel up to 10% of the time (market visit, customer or internal meetings)

Job requires the following physical activities:

- Working at a computer and video display terminal more than 80% of the time.

LOCATION

Bioggio, Switzerland

FULL TIME/PART TIME

Full time