Associate Merchant, Men's

About us: 

vineyard vines is a highly successful, privately held, American clothing and accessory retailer founded in 1998 on Martha’s Vineyard by brothers, Shep & Ian Murray. With Shep & Ian still at the helm today, vineyard vines has experienced exponential year over year growth and now operates over 120 retail locations including an outlet division, a successful e-commerce business, domestic distribution center, and expanding corporate headquarters. In addition, vineyard vines is carried in major department stores such as Nordstrom and Bloomingdales as well as numerous specialty boutiques across the US.    

vineyard vines was founded on a state of mind that Every day should feel this good.   

You don’t need to be on a beach, by the ocean or on vacation to have Every day should feel this good moments. It’s a state of mind that we all experience, and one where everyone is invited. At vineyard vines, we don’t just live an #EDSFTG life away from our desks—we bring it to work with us, too.    

In our stores, or at our Harbor Drive headquarters, our company culture is fun, encouraging and welcoming to all. We work hard and play harder, and we never take ourselves too seriously. And while we have many company goals, our number one priority is making vineyard vines a great place to work for all employees.    

Our team is our family, and we’d never have grown to where we are today without them.   

We’re committed to building an inclusive team across all channels, departments and stores within our community. We hope you’ll join us and see what the smiling pink whale is all about 

Overview:

The Associate Merchant, Men's plays an important role in shaping and driving the product strategy for the business, translating consumer insights and market trends into compelling assortments that fuel growth and customer engagement. This individual contributes to the development and execution of seasonal line plans, collaborates cross-functionally to ensure product innovation, and drives operational excellence from concept through commercialization.

The Associate Merchant acts as a key liaison between design, production, planning, and marketing teams to ensure alignment on seasonal strategies, margin targets, and delivery timelines. This role demands a strong business acumen, deep product sensibility, and the ability to respond quickly to selling trends and hindsight data.

Key Responsibilities:

• Identify and rapidly react to trends in weekly sales reports and seasonal hindsight reports 
• Create seasonal line plans to communicate product needs cross functionally and foster innovation 
• Partner with marketing to execute seasonal stories through all forms of media and sales channels 
• Drive quality sourcing, healthy margins, and on time deliveries in partnership with production 
• Act as the cross-functional liaison lead to execute seasonal assortments from concept through commercialization
• Establish and maintain a reputation of credibility, integrity, and responsiveness with all internal and external partners
• Ensure all critical deadlines are met to maintain flexibility and maximize profitability 
• Prepare seasonal strategies to all sales divisions and ensures product needs are met 
• Understand key trends in apparel, technology, and store/web merchandising
• Drive customer engagement through product testing, market research, and interaction 
• Support the execution of product rankings, store tiering/segmentation, and legitimizing SKU counts 
• Partner with planning team to align on seasonal buy plans, allocation strategies, and markdowns 

What you bring:  

• 3+ years of corporate Merchandising experience required
• Strong curiosity, and passion for the vineyard vines brand
• Merchant planner business acumen 
• Bachelor’s degree required
• Demonstrate strong analytical and problem-solving skills; comprehensive understanding of retail math*
• Team-oriented with ability to interact with partners across the organization at all levels
• Systems-savvy
• Must have strong Excel skills (Pivot Tables, vLook Ups, etc.)
• Strong listening, written and oral communication skills required
• Outstanding attention to detail and accuracy required
• Excellent product sensibility and ability to merchandise assortments in an appealing way
• Ability to react quickly with a strong sense of urgency
• Flexible and adaptive to changing priorities
• Able to organize and prioritize workload to meet deadlines
• Additional experience including combination of Buying, Planning, Pro