DTC & Retail Strategy Analyst

Role Summary

Free People is looking for a DTC & Retail Strategy Analyst who will support planning and allocation to maximize sales, profit and operating income by developing sound inventory strategies that support the company’s goals by channel.  This role will oversee special projects including new store openings, relocations and store specific opportunities related to inventory levels, assortment modifications and inventory planning for in market events.

Role Responsibilities

FP - Domestic Retail

• Work with manager to analyze, monitor, and execute all retail store budging activities as part of the annual budgeting process, including recommending category expansions or reductions for existing and new stores. Provide monthly reforecasts by store from a bottoms up approach to tie to top down metrics.  Monitor performance by store region, district, comp status and new stores.
• Support planning team by retrieving large amounts of dense data to solve complex business problems.  Organize and format data to make recommendations to drive sales and margin.
• Support the purchase order split process between channel and country, overseeing size scales by destination country and channel.  Follow up with appropriate buying partners to make sure split targets are met.
• Demonstrate an understanding of managing inventory between channels: US domestic, international direct and international stores.  Recommend inventory balancing between channels.
• Collaborate with Store regionals and Director of Stores to analyze field recommendations for improving retail business.  Be a key liaison between the home office and the store organization.  Investigate inventory concerns, sales-driving special events and transfer requests from the field.  Provide feedback and appropriate actions.
• Recommend and partner with the P&A team to establish new automatic replenishment programs and aid in the justification for expanding shared / omni inventory strategies.
• Provide inventory / assortment management direction to Planning and Allocation team that align with store demographic / volume grouping profiles. Drive improvements in supply chain to include pre-packing goods, ideal splits between DC’s by category and multi-DC backstock positioning.
• Perform ad hoc sales and margin analysis to unearth new opportunities to drive operating income.
• Support the weekly markdown process.
• Become an expert in core business systems to offer support to the planning and allocation teams, such as Microstrategy, Island Pacific, Warehouse Management and MID allocation.
• Participate in retail Buy and OTB meetings as needed.
• Monitor and report on the inventory allocation into new store openings and relocations.  Identify shortfalls to inventory plans and work with merchandising and allocation to build out the assortment to targets.  Follow up on inventory flow to store from shipping from the DC through the store opening.
• Communicate inventory needs for special, store level opportunities that are not visible at the top line to the planning and allocation teams. 

FP - International

• Coordinate all internal reporting needs for International Direct and Retail endeavors
• Closely monitor business results for our Canadian business and recommend actions to improve those businesses each month (including product extensions / reductions, MD’s, retail price changes, etc).
• Develop best practices within the MID allocation tool to support our Free People brick and mortar stores abroad. Develop replenishment tools as needed by developing a process that can scale to larger store counts.

Role Qualifications

• Strong financial and analytical skills
• Very eager to learn
• Can juggle multiple priorities at the same time
• Result oriented with an eye for an extreme attention to detail
• Creative problem solver, “outside the box” thinker with the ability to work in ambiguity
• Strong communication skills and work well in cross functional teams
• Advanced Excel skills (vlookups, pivot tables, index/match etc)
• Experience in Microsoft Access and/or VBA is beneficial
• Bachelor's in Finance or Business related degree preferred

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The Perks

URBN offers comprehensive Perks & Benefits to employees. Availability and eligibility to specific benefits may be subject to your location and employment status. Benefits include medical, dental, vision, PTO, generous employee discounts, retirement savings and much more! For additional information visit www.urbn.com/work-with-us/benefits 

EEO Statement

URBN celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We are proud to provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex (including gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression), religion, creed, age, physical or mental disability, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship, service in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic as established by law. We believe strongly in fostering a safe, fair and respectful work environment. To ensure compliance with our non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, we offer anti-harassment training to managers and employees.