Inventory Planner

Inventory Planner

A food company is seeking an experienced, analytical, and highly organized Inventory Planner to manage inventory planning, forecasting, and replenishment across our extensive product assortment.

We carry thousands of SKUs across multiple sports licenses, teams, product categories, and retail customers. The Inventory Planner will be responsible for ensuring that we have the right inventory, in the right quantities, at the right time, while minimizing excess and slow-moving inventory.

Key Responsibilities

• Analyze historical sales, current sales trends, open orders, and inventory levels to forecast future demand.
• Recommend what products need to be reordered, when they should be reordered, and in what quantities.
• Maintain appropriate inventory levels while preventing both stockouts and excess inventory.
• Plan inventory around seasonal demand, sports seasons, new product launches, and major customer programs.
• Monitor inventory by SKU, team, license, product category, and customer.
• Identify fast-selling products that require immediate replenishment.
• Identify slow-moving and excess inventory and recommend appropriate action.
• Account for overseas production and shipping lead times when developing purchasing recommendations.
• Work closely with Sales, Production, Purchasing, and Management to understand upcoming programs and anticipated demand.
• Review inventory and replenishment needs on a regular basis and provide management with clear, actionable recommendations.
• Track inventory performance and continuously improve forecasting accuracy.
• Help establish appropriate safety-stock and reorder levels for key products.
• Analyze new-product inventory needs where limited historical sales information is available.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in inventory planning, demand planning, replenishment, merchandise planning, or a similar analytical role.
• Strong Excel skills are essential.
• Strong analytical and forecasting ability.
• Experience managing a large number of SKUs.
• Experience with imported consumer products, wholesale, retail, apparel, or licensed merchandise is strongly preferred.
• Ability to analyze large amounts of data and turn it into clear purchasing recommendations.
• Strong attention to detail and excellent organizational skills.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment where priorities and customer demand can change quickly.
• Experience with inventory planning or ERP systems is preferred.

What Success Looks Like

The successful Inventory Planner will help increase in-stock levels on our best sellers while reducing excess inventory and unnecessary purchasing. This person should be proactive and able to identify inventory issues before they become problems.

This is a hands-on position for someone who enjoys working with numbers, understands inventory, and can confidently make recommendations to management based on the data.