The Merchandising & Planning Staff is responsible for developing, managing, and optimizing merchandise plans to achieve sales targets, maximize profitability, and ensure healthy inventory levels. This role plays a critical part in aligning sales performance, production planning, and inventory execution across stores, warehouses, and factories.
Key Responsibilities
Merchandise & Sales Planning
- Analyze historical sales data and trends to forecast future product demand and identify risks and opportunities.
- Develop comprehensive merchandise plans on a weekly, monthly, half-yearly, and yearly basis.
- Prepare and manage: o Sales targets aligned with overall store sales objectives o Initial allocation plans o Inventory plans, including store-level quantity distribution o Production plans
Inventory & Store Collaboration
- Collaborate with in-store Merchandising teams to ensure effective product display and store layout execution.
- Plan and execute promotion, marketing, price actions, and inter-branch transfers, particularly for slow-moving items.
- Create efficient and practical assortment boxes for stores, warehouses, and factories in accordance with production guidelines.
Performance Monitoring & Business Control
- Monitor sales performance, gross profit, and inventory conditions on an ongoing basis.
- Make timely business decisions and corrective actions based on sales trends and market conditions.
Cross-Functional Coordination
- Coordinate closely with production, factory, and logistics teams to ensure timely product delivery (targeting receipt 1–2 weeks before launch dates).
- Continuously review and adjust production quantities and delivery schedules based on sales performance and demand trends.
Requirements
Education & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Business Studies, Geography, or related fields.
- Minimum 3 years of experience in the retail industry, preferably at a supervisory level.
Skills & Competencies
- Strong analytical skills with a passion for data analysis, trend identification, and risk/opportunity assessment.
- Comfortable working with basic statistics and large datasets.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to work confidently across teams, including senior management, factories, and store operations.
- Resilience under pressure, with the ability to remain calm and make sound decisions in fast-changing, deadline-driven environments.
- Quick thinking and decision-making ability to respond effectively to shifting business conditions.
- High computer literacy, with the ability to work with internal systems for data analysis, reporting, and performance tracking.
- Strong commercial awareness, including understanding market trends, customer behavior, competitor activity, and broader economic conditions.
Uniqlo is a modern Japanese company that inspires the world to dress casually. Our corporate mission : Changing clothes, Changing conventional wisdom, Change the world. Fast Retailing strives to create truly great clothing with new and unique value, so it can enrich people’s lives.