Senior Manager Planning and Trading (Temp, 6 months)

Senior Manager Planning and Trading – 6 Month Temporary Assignment

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

Sitting in the EU eCommerce Product Merchandising team, the EU eCom Planning & Trading team owns and evolves the decisions and process leading to a seasonal plan that ensures we buy the right amount of the right product at the right time for our consumers.

The Planning & Trading Senior Manager acts as key responsible in translating a financial forecast into a seasonal open-to-buy plan for the respective category, identifying business opportunities & risks and representing that plan across key stakeholders cross-functionally to ensure overall monthly/quarterly/yearly/seasonal targets set are met.

You will play a pivotal role in bringing the European category eCom Strategy and Execution to life by providing best-in-class merchandise financial plan; ensuring optimal pre-season assortment framework, while also driving real-time, in-season trading by leveraging assortment insights signals into actions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Contribute to a high-performance culture across whole buying/planning/trading teams by having a consistent and clear communication about expectations and targets, analyzing assortment performance and trends, and delivering proper recommendations and enhancements.
• Own monthly IBP process for respective assortment areas of competence and provide insights and guidance to all relevant stakeholders involved.
• Define and continuously optimize pre-season strategy and Open-To-Buy plan for the respective categories for .com channel following the market financial targets.
• Act as facilitator in providing transparency in reconciling month-to-date (or quarter-to-date, or year-to-date) assortment performance with seasonal point of view, focusing especially on segmenting properly performance as owned vs partner program and into full price vs. other marketing buckets.
• Act as main contributor to Monthy Buy Snapshot session by ensuring transparency on all relevant insights but also acting as catalysator of relevant topics coming from the different teams.
• Create business cases for future opportunities, from a short-term point of view but also from mid- and long term.
• Deliver in tight collaboration with EU eCom Buying, seasonal Merchandise Financial Plans and seasonal Buy Sign Off Plans to drive productivity and profitability.
• Optimize and drive category performance in tight collaboration with EU Buying, Merchandising Operations, Demand Planning, Digital Visual Merchandising, Brand and other Functions, in order to meet topline (demand / net sales) but also margin and other profitability related targets.
• Drive evolution of approach and processes for all planning and trading milestones, regular meetings and business updates by leveraging internal and external networks to define optimization opportunities and best practices.
• Participate to major seasonal and go-to-market milestones to gain insight into key seasonal brand and BU strategies and initiatives.
• Create and guide cross-functional collaboration among several stakeholders to optimize performance as part of the regular cadence of weekly and monthly trading practices.
• Identify and react to changing business, and industry landscapes and create/execute strategies to maintain sales momentum.
• Collaborate with Global Trading Analytics, EU Analytics, and other analytics teams to optimize reporting solution and capabilities and create new tools relevant to make recommendations and influence business decisions.
• Drive horizontal Planning & Trading milestones; Monthly Integrated Business Planning or Weekly/Monthly Trading or Seasonal Merchandise Financial Plan & Buy Sign Off.
• Lead the team for the respective area of responsibility, including prioritizing, assigning, and directing workload, managing performance and support the development of the team.
• Support and drive together with line manager (Planning & Trading Director) larger transformational projects and also engagement & interaction models with other teams and functions.

Key Relationships:

• eCom EU Buying
• eCom EU Merchandising Ops.
• eCom EU Trading FO
• eCom EU & market EU Finance
• eCom EU Sales Planning & Forecasting
• eCom EU Demand Planning
• eCom EU Digital Visual Merchandising
• eCom EU Digital Sales
• eCom EU Digital Activation
• EU Brand Finance & Business Units teams
• Global Digital Trading Analytics & Data Science

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Passionate about product, deep knowledge of merchandising and retail topics and broad knowledge of other functional areas relevant from a buying, planning, trading and product creation process.
• Knowledge and passion for Sports, global fashion, sneakerhead, hype, fashion influencer.
• Understanding of key assortment and digital KPIs (e.g., Traffic, AOV, PDP views, CVR, ROS, Markdown depth, Sell Through, etc.), their interconnected nature and what levers to drive to improve performance.
• Self-motivated and passionate about deriving business insight from data, improving business processes, and solving problems.
• Experience in Leading and Developing Teams - ensure organizational efficiency through effective motivation, training and development. A builder of diverse, inclusive high performing teams and talents.
• Advanced Excel skills and proficiency in spreadsheet analysis, Power Bi data visualization tool is a plus.
• Strong organizational and planning skills to handle multiple tasks and business partners.
• Solution-oriented with a focus on achieving results. Quick to learn new systems and tools.
• Highly motivated and flexible, with the ability to work in deadline driven environment.
• Excellent PowerPoint skills coupled with excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Fluent in English both verbally and written.

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

• BA / BS in Business, Marketing, Finance, Economics or related field
• 5+ Years of overall work experience
• Fashion / Sporting Goods Industry experience
• Previous relevant experience within an ecommerce environment: at least 3+ years trading planning, merchandising demand forecasting, or equivalent experience is a plus
• Proven ability to successfully work in a highly cross-functional matrixed environment
• Relevant people management experience.

AT ADIDAS WE HAVE A WINNING CULTURE. BUT TO WIN, PHYSICAL POWER IS NOT ENOUGH. JUST LIKE ATHLETES OUR EMPLOYEES NEED MENTAL STRENGTH IN THEIR GAME. WE FOSTER THE ATHLETE’S MINDSET THROUGH A SET OF BEHAVIORS THAT WE WANT TO ENABLE AND DEVELOP IN OUR PEOPLE AND THAT ARE AT THE CORE OF OUR UNIQUE COMPANY CULTURE: THIS IS HOW WE WIN WHILE PLAYING FAIR.

• COURAGE: Speak up when you see an opportunity; step up when you see a need.
• OWNERSHIP: Pick up the ball. Be proactive, take responsibility and follow-through.
• INNOVATION: Elevate to win. Be curious, test and learn new and better ways of doing things.
• TEAMPLAY: Win together. Work collaboratively and cultivate a shared mindset.
• INTEGRITY: Play by the rules. Hold yourself and others accountable to our company’s standards.
• RESPECT: Value all players. Display empathy, be inclusive and show dignity to all.

At adidas, we strongly believe that embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into our culture and talent processes gives our employees a sense of belonging and our brand a real competitive advantage.

– Culture Starts With People, It Starts With You –

By recruiting talent and developing our people to reflect the rich diversity of our consumers and communities, we foster a culture of inclusion that engages our employees and authentically connects our brand with our consumers.