Head of Merchandise Planning - 6-month Fixed Term Contract

Head of Merchandise Planning - Maternity Cover (6 months)

About the Role: Elevation Recruitment Group are seeking a Head of Merchandise Planning to join our client's team on a 6-month maternity cover. This pivotal role will be responsible for delivering all key financial Merchandising KPIs across our business. You will thrive on balancing big-picture strategies with attention to detail and enjoy being customer-facing, as it allows you to maintain, develop, and contribute to a profitable business plan across all formats and product areas.

Key Responsibilities:

• Financial Planning: Lead Net GI and EPOS planning for customers with multi-million-pound sales turnovers.
• Risk Management: Identify and evaluate all internal and external factors with clear assumptions and contingency plans to successfully deliver the agreed plan.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Secure alignment to the plan with key stakeholders, both internal and external.
• Action Planning: Define all actions required to deliver the plan, supported by relevant KPIs.
• Trading Activity: Drive effective trading activity by analysing and evaluating performance to ensure interventions maximise sales or mitigate risks.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Develop strong relationships and understanding of each function to ensure all activities are delivered in the most effective and profitable way.
• Strategic Opportunities: Use financial analysis to generate, evaluate, and deliver on strategic opportunities aligned with the strategic direction of both the customer and the business.
• Joint Business Plan: Define and set the customer Joint Business Plan alongside the Head of Commercial Development and contribute to the success of the wider merchandising team.
• Functional Specialist Lead: Participate in wider business initiatives to drive efficiencies, improved ways of working, and increased profit.

Required Qualifications:

• Experience: Solid experience in a Merchandising Planning role within a Retail/FMCG business.
• Influencing Skills: Proven experience influencing others across multiple functions, both internally and externally.
• Analytical Skills: Excellent Excel, numeric, and analytical abilities to identify commercial insights relevant to our audience.
• Communication: Confident communicator with the ability to adjust their approach to varying audiences, combining superior presentation skills with skilled use of data and insights.
• Commercial Thinking: Ability to engage and influence key stakeholders across the business to ensure profit growth is core to all decisions made.
• Retail Knowledge: Thorough knowledge of the retail planning process and the ability to motivate, inspire, and lead those around them.
• Decision Making: Confident, data-driven decision maker, efficient in making decisions with strategy and business plans in mind.
• Organisational Skills: Highly organised with a keen eye for detail, experienced in planning and forecasting sales across multiple seasons/customers.
• Leadership: A natural leader, with previous experience of leading a team being an advantage.
• Industry Awareness: Solid awareness of retail influences, ideally in our category, which are factored into decision making to mitigate risks to sales.

Benefits:

• Competitive salary
• 26 days holiday plus bank holidays
• Annual bonus scheme
• Car allowance
• Health cashback scheme
• Pension benefit
• Flexible working opportunities, including working from home
• Free onsite parking
• A variety of cultural and lifestyle benefits aimed at promoting a positive work/life balance