Merchandise Planner

JOB DESCRIPTION

Location: Addison, TX (In-Office, 5 days/week)

Job Type: Contract (potential contract-to-hire)

Note: Ideal start date is January 13th, 2026

Our retail client is seeking a Merchandise Planner to join the team on a temporary basis (with potential for contract-to-hire). This role will partner closely with the Senior Merchandise Planner and cross-functional teams to support seasonal planning, inventory management, and forecasting for a primarily e-commerce business. This is a hands-on, flexible role ideal for someone who has worked in smaller or emerging brands and is comfortable wearing multiple hats while helping build and refine planning processes.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain ladder plans for ecommerce, ensuring alignment with marketing, drops, and financial targets
• Take over and manage the Ecommerce Open-to-Buy (OTB) — build, update, and communicate OTB to support growth and manage risk
• Help with seasonal ecommerce buys and forecasting; gradually take on more of the forecasting responsibility for future drops
• Lead sizing strategy for seasonal buys, including detailed size curve and size performance analysis to right-size buys and reduce stock imbalances
• Support the company's entry into wholesale with planning insights on assortment, depth, and sizing
• Work heavily in Excel to build, maintain, and enhance planning tools, reports, and models (including complex formulas and multi-tab workbooks)
• Use Netsuite (ERP) to manage and maintain critical item master data and ensure accurate product information flows through the business
• Oversee and validate inventory uploads from Shopify, ensuring data integrity across systems
• Support and refine reporting coming out of WFX (PLM)
• Develop new reporting around color performance, category performance, and key merchandising KPIs to bring a more nuanced, data-informed view to buying decisions
• Introduce more structured markdown planning and recommendations; help identify when and where to take action on slow movers, excess inventory, and aging styles
• Proactively flag inventory risks and opportunities to marketing and ecommerce (e.g., excess, low stock, broken style/size/color ranges)
• Help build a more mature merchandising analytics function — including analysis by color, size, channel, and launch type
• Work with our 3rd-party warehouse data to ensure stock, receipts, and availability line up with ecommerce and wholesale plans
• Collaborate closely with Marketing/Ecommerce/Customer Service to provide clear, actionable data on inventory, new launches, and promotional opportunities
• Partner with Production & Design on future seasons, ensuring buys are informed by hindsight and in-season performance
• Work with finance on topline planning, OTB discipline, and margin-aware decision-making
• Interact directly with our founders/owners, who are very hands-on, to present insights and discuss key inventory and assortment decisions
• Take full ownership of ladder plans with minimal oversight; ensure they are accurate, timely, and actionable
• Assume responsibility for the ecommerce OTB and be able to walk stakeholders through it confidently
• Support ecommerce buys & forecasting for upcoming drops
• Stand up or improve basic color and size analysis to inform future buys and reduce misses

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of merchandise planning experience in apparel, fashion, or a closely related retail category
• Some traditional retail experience (e.g., department store, specialty retail, or branded retailer) to ground you in core planning disciplines is preferred
• Experience working in a small or fast-growing company where you’ve had to be flexible, wear multiple hats, and work without a large, structured planning department
• Comfort owning a mix of “classic” planning tasks and non-traditional responsibilities that happen in a lean environment
• Advanced Excel skills are required. You should be fluent with: complex formulas (e.g., nested IFs, INDEX/MATCH/XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, etc.), large data sets and multi-sheet workbooks, and building and troubleshooting planning templates and reports
• Comfortable working in at least one ERP (Netsuite is a plus) and one PLM system
• Experience with Shopify or similar ecommerce platforms is a plus