Assistant Manager Planning & Trading

at  Adidas

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:
Sitting in the EU eCommerce Trading 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 Assistant Manager is 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 key 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 reccomendations and enhancements.
• Own monthly IBP process for respective assortment areas of competence and provide insights and guidance to all relevant stakeholders involved.
• Contribute 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.
• Support Monthy Buy Review session by ensuring transparency on all relevant insights but also acting as catalysator of relevant topics coming from the different teams
• Support 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.
• Support optimizing and driving 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.
• Support to evolve approach and processes for all planning and trading milestones, regular meetings and businss udpates 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 stakehodlers 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.
• Support the team in the interaction 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.
• Support the team in horizontal milestones management and deliverables.

Key Relationships:

• eCom EU Buying
• eCom EU Promo/Pricing & Merchandising Ops.
• eCom EU & market EU Finance
• eCom EU Growth
• eCom EU Demand Planning
• EU CTC Merchandising Teams (Assortment Planning & Business Units)
• eCom EU Analytics
• Global Digital Trading Analytics & Data Science
• eCom EU Digital Visual Merchandising
• eCom EU DPC & Partner Program
• eCom EU Outlet
• eCom EU Digital Activation

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.
• Knowledges and passion for Sports, global fashion, sneakerhead, hype, fashion influencer

Market.

• Understanding of key assortment and digital KPIs (e.g., Traffic, AOV, PDP views, CVR, ROS, Markdown depth, Sell Through, …), their interconnected nature and what levers to drive to improve performance is a plus.
• Self-motivated and passionate about deriving business insight from data, improving business processes, and solving problems.
• Advanced Excel skills and proficiency in spreadsheet analysis, Power Bi data visualization tool is a plus.
• 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.
• Good 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
• 1+ Years of overall work experience
• Fashion / Sporting Goods Industry experience is a plus
• Previous experience within an ecommerce, retail, products, merchandising environment or equivalent experience is a plus
• Ability to successfully work in a highly cross-functional matrixed environment

• 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 reccomendations and enhancements.
• Own monthly IBP process for respective assortment areas of competence and provide insights and guidance to all relevant stakeholders involved.
• Contribute 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.
• Support Monthy Buy Review session by ensuring transparency on all relevant insights but also acting as catalysator of relevant topics coming from the different teams
• Support 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.
• Support optimizing and driving 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.
• Support to evolve approach and processes for all planning and trading milestones, regular meetings and businss udpates 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 stakehodlers 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.
• Support the team in the interaction 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.
• Support the team in horizontal milestones management and deliverables