Merchandise Planner

YNK Incubator; Elmwood Park (NJ); On-site; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

YNK is seeking a merchandising planner to scale multiple consumer brands. The role focuses on owning merchandising and demand planning across a portfolio, analyzing performance, and making data-driven buying decisions.

You’ll work with AI tools to forecast and optimize inventory, margins, and cash flow. Ideal candidates bring 5+ years in planning for consumer brands, strong Excel/Sheets skills, and comfort with SQL/BI/Python.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in merchandising planning, demand planning, or inventory/buying for consumer brands.
• Experience scaling brands with measurable results.
• Highly quantitative with Excel/Sheets and comfort with SQL, BI tools, or Python.

Responsibilities

• Own merchandising and demand planning across multiple brands, switching between them while maintaining depth.
• Analyze sell-through, inventory health, pricing, and assortment to guide buying and planning decisions.
• Build and maintain each brand's unit economics: COGS, landed costs, margin structure, contribution per unit and per channel.
• Negotiate supplier terms, MOQs, and payment structures with cash/P&L impact in mind.
• Contribute to each brand's P&L by flagging risks and sizing opportunities with data-driven recommendations.
• Use AI tools for forecasting, scenario modeling, and analysis to raise planning speed and accuracy.
• Partner daily with brand leads, 3PL, and finance to ground plans in reality.

Skills

Merchandising planning

Demand planning

Inventory/buying

Quantitative analysis

AI in forecasting

Cross-brand juggling

Tools

Excel/Sheets

SQL

BI tools

Python

Job description

YNK is the orchestrator behind a family of consumer brands and the services that scale them, including our 3PL, brand studio, and growth teams. We operate as one team out of one office. Every brand in our portfolio gets the full weight of that machine.

The Role

About YNK

YNK is the orchestrator behind a family of consumer brands and the services that scale them, including our 3PL, brand studio, and growth teams. We operate as one team out of one office. Every brand in our portfolio gets the full weight of that machine.

The Role

We're hiring a merchandising planner who is a beast at scaling consumer brands. Not a spreadsheet operator. A commercial athlete.

You'll own merchandising planning across a portfolio of brands. That means diving deep into one brand in the morning and switching to another by afternoon, holding each one's numbers in your head, and knowing what levers to pull. You'll analyze performance using your own skills and AI tools, and you'll be expected to be sharp with both.

This is a quantitative role with a commercial spine. You think in unit economics. You know what COGS, payment terms, and inventory turns do to cash. You don't wait to be asked. You see a margin leak or a buying opportunity and you bring it to the table with the math already done.

What You'll Do

• Own merchandising and demand planning across multiple brands, moving fluidly between them without losing depth on any
• Analyze sell-through, inventory health, pricing, and assortment performance, and turn that analysis into buying and planning decisions
• Build and maintain each brand's unit economics: COGS, landed costs, margin structure, contribution per unit and per channel
• Negotiate and evaluate supplier terms, MOQs, and payment structures with a clear view of their cash and P&L impact
• Contribute proactively to each brand's P&L: flag risks early, size opportunities, and push recommendations before anyone asks for them
• Use AI tools aggressively in your workflow for forecasting, scenario modeling, and analysis, and keep raising the bar on how fast and well planning gets done
• Partner daily with brand leads, our 3PL, and finance to keep plans grounded in operational reality

Who You Are

• 5+ years in merchandising planning, demand planning, or inventory/buying roles for consumer brands, ideally across DTC and retail
• A track record of scaling brands, with numbers to prove it
• Highly quantitative: advanced Excel/Sheets at minimum, and comfort with SQL, BI tools, or Python is a strong plus
• Fluent in the financial side of merchandising: COGS, terms, working capital, cash conversion, contribution margin
• Already using AI in your daily work and hungry to go further
• Comfortable with context switching across brands at different stages, categories, and scales
• Proactive by default: you surface problems and opportunities before they show up in a report
• Clear communicator who can defend a recommendation to founders and finance alike

What Success Looks Like

• Every brand in your portfolio has a living plan tied to its P&L, not a static forecast
• Inventory is right‑sized: fewer stockouts, less dead stock, better cash position
• Margin improves because you found the leaks and closed them
• Leadership trusts your numbers enough to make buying and pricing calls on them