Altra: Direct to Consumer (DTC) Merchandising Manager

At Altra, we are on a never-ending journey to seek out opportunities to unlock potential in ourselves and others and to create a more diverse and inclusive running community. When we’re all working together as the best versions of ourselves, we can feel empowered both individually and as a community. So, before we get to the job details, take a minute to learn a little more about us – our values and our culture. If you can see yourself working side-by-side with a team of people driven to discover more about ourselves and the world around us, Altra just may be the place for you. To learn more about our values and our culture, visit Altra Careers or www.altrarunning.com.

What will you do?

As the DTC Merchandising Manager, you will lead all product demand forecasting and in season merchandising to achieve the financial goals of the Altra Ecommerce and Retail businesses. You’ll combine strong product knowledge with industry trends and insights to guide DTC forecasting and merchandising to align with the latest consumer needs and trends. The DTC Merchandising Manager is deeply involved in the GTM process and serves as the voice of the DTC channels for all future season product assortment planning needs.

This role also owns current season on site and in store merchandising for our ecommerce sites and retail stores, ensuring relevant products, colors, use cases, etc. are all incorporated well into the customer experiences. You’ll partner with stakeholders across the Altra brand (marketing, product, operations, finance, etc.) to ensure the right inventory is planned for and our merchandising strategy is supporting sell through of that inventory.

The DTC Merchandising Manager covers US and Canada, reports in to the DTC Director and has one direct report; the DTC Merchandiser. This role is located in our Denver, CO headquarters.

Let’s break down that day-in-the-life a bit more. This role will:

• Strategize, develop and execute seasonal product forecasts, ensuring alignment with consumer trends, sales performance, and market demand
• Own analysis and regular reporting on current product trends in the DTC channels to feed into financial forecasting models and future seasonal product go to market processes

• Partner closely with the operations team to uncover demand trends that would lead to large deltas from the DTC forecasts and strategize on inventory solutions

• Execute online and in store merchandising strategies that maximize product visibility, optimize placement, and drive sales. This includes ownership of PLP’s, product categorization, color management, product recommenders, UGC, shoe finder, product reviews and seeding, fit recommendations and other key areas of the site.
• Create and maintain a forward-looking merchandise strategy and own replenishment ordering for the Altra retail stores business
• Own all planning, ordering and shipping processes for cross-brand selling in our DTC channels
• Collaborate with marketing teams to ensure they are featuring styles and colors with healthy inventory standings on all outbound marketing
• Manage our external website vendors to improve customer experiences like shoe finder, onsite user generated content, product reviews and fit recommendations

What skills do you need to succeed?

• Analytical: It’s not enough just to uncover trends in the data – you crave understanding the why behind them and are able to organize others around merchandising strategies to amplify them. You’re at home in excel spreadsheets and reporting suites and you’re weirdly passionate about pivot tables.
• Curious: Nothing excites you more than uncovering some hidden finding or opportunity that can help create a better experience for our customers.
• World Class Communicator: You understand that the best merchandising strategies are useless unless it can be understood and acted upon by others. Therefore, you excel in distilling complex analytical concepts into coherent stories and recommendations.
• Results-Driven: You want the team to win and take pride in delivering great work
• Collaborative: You’re happy to lend a helping hand to others who need your expertise. Not just providing them data, but also helping them build upon their own skillsets when it comes to understanding consumers and product trends.
• Aptitude for Growth: We’re a quickly growing brand and merchandising is a fast-growing component of that. You’re excited by fast paced growth, and you have the experience to manage a merchandiser today and can flex into more leadership as business needs require.