Senior Manager Planning and 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 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 reccomendations 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 Review 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 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.
• 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 respecitve area of responisbility, including prioritizing, assigning, and directing workload, managing performance and support the development of the team
• Support and drive together with line manager (Plannig & Trading Director) larger transformational projects and also engagement & interaction models with other teams and functions.

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.
• 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

• 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.
• 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 Review 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 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.
• 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 respecitve area of responisbility, including prioritizing, assigning, and directing workload, managing performance and support the development of the team
• Support and drive together with line manager (Plannig & Trading Director) larger transformational projects and also engagement & interaction models with other teams and functions