Director Merchandising Planning

Mejuri is the category-defining fine jewelry brand redefining luxury, your way. Feeling disconnected from an industry that typically markets to men, co-founder and CEO Noura Sakkijha leveraged her learnings as a third-generation jeweler to rethink the way women purchase jewelry—for themselves. In only seven years, and with a team of over 75% women, Mejuri has shipped over one million orders and opened retail stores across the globe, all while introducing new products weekly.   As part of Noura’s original vision to empower women to invest in themselves, the brand launched the Empowerment Fund to support underrepresented women and non-binary individuals with the tools to empower themselves. Mejuri continues to reach new customers through exciting community initiatives and expansion into international markets, such as the UK, Australia and Germany.   We are a team of retailers, creatives, technologists and strategists, and we are looking for someone special to join our team.  Director of Merchandising Planning

Mejuri is searching for a Director of Merchandise planning to join our team! The ideal candidate is a business and financially savvy customer-centric, data-driven, analytical self-starter who is motivated by the opportunity to collaborate internally and externally and executes with excellence for our fast growing brand! 

Reporting to the head of planning, this positive and forward-thinking individual will be responsible for ensuring the product assortment and inventory plans meet customer expectations while aligning with Mejuri’s financial goals.  This role is a key partner to the senior management and merchandising teams by providing data-driven insights, managing inventory, and planning product financials to drive overall business performance.  

This opportunity is ideal for someone who has experience working in a fast paced, high growth retail environment with frequent store openings, is comfortable working cross-functionally across various levels, and is looking to provide high-value work within a small and agile team while seeing the impact of their work in real-time.

What you’ll do:

• Develop merchandise financial plans which optimize product category sales, financial, margin, and inventory goals.
• Lead the forecasting for carryover and new product launches and new store openings.
• Be the focal point for weekly sales reporting, developing tailored reporting for senior leadership and the merchandising, finance, supply chain, retail sales, and digital teams.
• Develop and deliver performance analysis across the business that measures achievement of sales, margin, and inventory plans.
• Manage the open to buy (OTB) process (part of the sales and operations planning process) that budgets for inventory purchases of both carryover and new products.  
• Support the buy review process (where new product investments are agreed) with forecasting and analysis including halo and cannibalization estimates, required inventory investment, and margin.
• Be the go-to for ad-hoc and diagnostic analysis of sales, gross margin, and inventory performance, communicating insights, corrective actions, and recommendations.
• Provide analytical support to the merchandising team as they develop product assortment, pricing, life cycle, and discontinuation plans.
• Help develop systems and tools to facilitate the merchandising planning function.
• Lead and develop a small team of demand and merchandise planners.

What you bring to the team:

• Experience: 5+ years of experience in a retail environment including time as a planner, buyer or retail business analyst.
• Demonstrated leadership experience, managing teams and working with executive leaders
• Experience in high growth retail environment with frequent new store openings
• Demonstrated retail experience and business acumen including forecasting, promotions, margin planning, selling and inventory productivity measures.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills including the ability to present complex material in an organized and compelling manner.
• Proven track record in assortment and inventory planning to help optimize retail stores for highest conversion rates
• Strategic thinker who recognizes opportunities and can recommend strategies by building business case and influence senior leaders to move to execution
• High level of conceptual creative ability. Strong product sense with proven experience in driving product assortments and partnering to lead investment strategies that drive business.
• Strong time management skills, attention to detail, problem solving, interpersonal and organizational skills – communication between functional groups is very critical