Commercial Planning Trainee

Commercial Planning Trainee

Full-time, 38 hours a week

Action is active in 15 markets, and we continue to grow. This growth also creates new opportunities within Commercial Planning. As a Commercial Planning Trainee, you join an 18-month programme that helps you build the skills and confidence to become a well-rounded commercial planner. From our headquarters in Zwaagdijk, you learn how Commercial Planning supports our fast-growing organisation and how we work with teams across the business. Through three phases, you gain hands-on experience in forecasting, assortment planning, and category management, take on real responsibilities from day one, and finish the traineeship with a clear next step in your career.

Your daily tasks

As a Commercial Planning Trainee at Action, you will follow this career track:

Phase 1 – Laying the Foundation (Months 1–6)

You will start by immersing yourself in the way of working within Action and the Commercial Planning team. Working closely with experienced colleagues, you will build your first understanding of demand planning and sales forecasting, and how an accurate forecast drives everything from assortment decisions to store performance.

• Get to know the full Commercial Planning team, your Buying Team counterparts, and key stakeholders in Supply Chain — understand who does what and how it all connects.
• Become familiar with the way of working within commercial planning, while starting to understand the basics of Anaplan.
• Learn how Demand Plans are created, how forecasts are built and adjusted, and what impact they have on the assortment and on other areas of Action.
• Support the team's Commercial Planners with any additional tasks to deepen your understanding of the role.
• Begin familiarising yourself with category strategy, trends, and how performance is tracked and reviewed.

Phase 2 – Skilling Up (Months 6–12)

With a solid foundation in place, you will work alongside an experienced Commercial Planner on a shared category — actively contributing rather than just observing. You will deepen your knowledge of assortment planning, country-level impacts, and the full planning cycle.

• Prepare for and attend weekly Buyer, Stock, and Seasonal meetings to build an understanding of the department's performance, risks, and opportunities.
• Get familiar with the category strategy — from meters and shelf plans to Buying Label plans and seasonal or country-specific assortment plans.
• Become acquainted with assortment planning at country level: onboarding, adjusting plans, and collaborating with buyers on specific risks and opportunities within the assortment.
• Work actively on your shared category or product groups, focusing on shorter-term planning with country-specific assortment and Multisource-heavy product groups.

Phase 3 – Creating Impact (Months 12–18)

Depending on your progress in Phase 2, you will independently manage a small category or a defined set of product groups. You own the forecast, the assortment plan, and the day-to-day planning decisions — and you bring a commercial planner's mindset to everything you do.

• Take full ownership of your category: build and maintain the forecast, manage the assortment plan, and proactively flag risks and opportunities to the Buying team.
• Drive country-level assortment planning for your category — onboarding, adjusting, and collaborating with buyers to optimise the assortment.
• Develop a category review or improvement plan: take what you have learned, gather additional input, and create a clear picture of what the business has and what it is missing.
• Prepare for a Commercial Planner role upon completion, with a track record, a network, and the confidence to step in from day one.

Your team

You will become part of the Commercial Planning team at Action — a team that sits at the heart of our commercial organisation. Commercial Planning works closely with Buying, Supply Chain, and country teams to make sure the right products are in the right place at the right time, in the right quantities. With Action opening more than 300 new stores every year and operating across 15 countries, the scale and pace of this team is unlike anything else in European retail.

From day one, you will have a dedicated assignment manager to guide you through each phase of the traineeship. Your colleagues are eager to share their knowledge and help you grow into a confident commercial planner.

What you offer

You are energised by data and enjoy turning numbers into decisions. You are curious about what drives sales, why forecasts deviate, and how assortment changes ripple through a retail organisation. You ask smart questions, build relationships quickly, and are not afraid to take ownership.

Your background:

• A completed Bachelor's or Master's degree, preferably in Business Economics, Commerce, Supply Chain, or a related field.
• 0–2 years of work experience; affinity with retail is a plus.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office, particularly Excel.
• Good command of English (spoken and written); Dutch is a plus.

Necessary competencies:

• Analytical thinking to read forecasts, interpret data, and make commercially sound decisions.
• Learning agility to absorb new knowledge quickly across forecasting, assortment planning, and category management.
• Communicative and curious — you proactively build relationships across departments and are not afraid to ask the right questions.
• Structured and disciplined — you manage your own workload, meet deadlines, and stay organised in a fast-moving environment.

What we offer

From our headquarters in the Netherlands, you will have an impact across the whole of Europe. Action's growth means you can always take steps to develop as a professional — whether that is a next position, an interesting project, or new skills. And you can do all that in a culture built around our shared values: customer focus, teamwork, simplicity, discipline, cost-consciousness, and respect.

• A competitive salary (based on a 38-hour working week).
• 24 days holiday with the option to buy five additional days (based on 38 hours per week).
• 15% staff discount on your purchases at Action.
• Collective health insurance and travel allowance (Zwaagdijk is reachable from Amsterdam by car in just 30 minutes on uncongested roads).

We believe integrity is of great importance. A pre-employment screening is therefore part of the process for this vacancy.