Director of Planning & Assortment
Full-Time / Exempt | Los Angeles, CA | Hybrid Confidential — Company name shared upon interview Salary Range: $185,000 - $220,000 base + bonus eligibility
About This Opportunity
An LA-based leader in personalized women's styling is hiring a Director of Planning & Assortment to own the full merchandise planning and buying strategy across its women's and men's businesses. This is a high-autonomy, technically rigorous role for someone who is equally comfortable building a demand forecast, leading a buying team, and presenting a seasonal assortment strategy — all in the same week.
If you've built cohesive, commercially strong assortments, know merchandise financial planning cold, and are energized by the intersection of AI-powered analytics and real product judgment, this is a role worth a conversation.
Role Summary
The Director of Planning & Assortment owns assortment architecture and merchandise planning strategy end-to-end, and directly leads the buying team that executes against it. You'll ensure every theme and season delivers a cohesive, commercially optimized assortment across third-party brands, private label programs, and core business channels.
This role sits at the intersection of analytical planning and creative merchandising. You bring full product lifecycle fluency, from pre-season architecture through in-season optimization to end-of-life exit, and the buying acumen to translate plans into compelling product selections. This is a lean, low-bureaucracy environment where technical depth, independent judgment, and hard work directly shape customer experience and company performance.
What You'll Own:
Assortment Planning & Architecture
- Own the end-to-end assortment plan, building cohesive assortments that balance breadth, depth, newness, and brand mix against financial targets and customer data.
- Build and maintain assortment architectures that reflect customer segmentation, attribute-level performance, trend signals, and white-space opportunities — serving as the single point of accountability for assortment integrity.
- Develop pre-season and in-season plans for both third-party and private label programs, managing each product lifecycle stage — introduction, growth, maturation, and exit — with precision.
- Define the seasonal vision and thematic direction for each assortment, then ensure buying execution delivers against it with a curated, intentional product mix.
- Set and manage targets for receipt flow, sales plan, margin, inventory turns, weeks of supply, and sell-through by category and brand type.
Buying Strategy & Execution
- Lead and direct the buying team, ensuring all purchasing decisions ladder up to the assortment plan and reinforce seasonal themes, category strategies, and financial targets.
- Guide buyers on brand selection, style-level decisions, and order quantities to keep assortments cohesive and free of redundancy, gaps, or drift.
- Own end-to-end buying strategy for assigned categories as needed, using AI-assisted trend forecasting, predictive analytics, and rapid in-season experimentation.
- Maintain and grow vendor partnerships that support speed, innovation, flexibility, and margin improvement.
- Partner with the internal Private Label team to drive private label growth informed by predictive trend data, attribute analytics, and lifecycle calendars — ensuring those assortments complement and strengthen the overall product mix.
Merchandise Financial Planning & Analytics
- Lead merchandise financial planning processes including OTB management, tops-down/bottoms-up reconciliation, and scenario modeling.
- Apply strong mathematical and statistical skills to demand forecasting, size-curve optimization, pricing elasticity analysis, and promotional impact modeling.
- Develop measurable success criteria tied to KPIs including margin dollars, inventory turns, GMROI, conversion, and customer relevance.
- Own lifecycle margin management across the full product journey — from initial markup strategies through markdown cadence and liquidation planning — for both third-party and private label programs.
AI, Planning Tools & Automation
- Integrate and champion AI tools within the planning and buying workflow — demand-forecasting models, assortment simulations, attribute-level analytics, and LLM-powered trend research.
- Evaluate, implement, and optimize planning platforms and technologies that increase speed, accuracy, and scalability across both functions.
- Build lean, automated processes to improve replenishment triggers, size/color optimization, and receipt-flow management.
- Use ML-driven insights to reduce bias in assortment and buying decisions, surface emerging opportunities, and accelerate test-and-learn cycles.
Cross-Functional & Team Leadership
- Work closely with other leaders to align assortment architecture with seasonal themes, customer preferences, and style-level penetration goals.
- Lead cross-functional initiatives where planning rigor, buying expertise, and data-backed decision making drive business outcomes.
- Lead, coach, and develop the buying team to operate with autonomy, analytical precision, and clear ownership — building the connective tissue between planning strategy and market-level buying decisions.
- Use AI and advanced planning tools to uplevel team capability across forecast accuracy, hindsight discipline, market sensing, and vendor negotiation.
- Create a culture of continuous improvement, intellectual curiosity, and measurable impact.
What You Bring
- 8–10+ years of merchandising, planning, and/or buying experience in apparel, including direct leadership of buying teams.
- Deep apparel expertise with a strong understanding of fit, fabrication, seasonality, and category nuance across women's and/or men's apparel.
- End-to-end product lifecycle experience across both third-party brand buying and private label development — from concept through exit.
- Strong mathematical and analytical foundation, including comfort with statistical modeling, demand forecasting, and financial planning frameworks.
- Demonstrated proficiency with AI-driven tools and modern planning platforms — you evaluate, adopt, and integrate new technologies, not just use what you're handed.
- Proven ability to build cohesive, commercially strong assortments that tell a clear story by theme and season.
- Advanced Excel / Google Sheets skills; experience with enterprise planning systems a plus.
- Ability to make independent, data-informed decisions with speed and conviction — not layers of approval.
- Strong communication skills — able to translate quantitative insights and tradeoffs clearly for both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Creativity balanced with disciplined, quantitative thinking.
- Bachelor's degree in Merchandising, Business, Mathematics, or related field preferred but not required.
- Ability to travel as needed.
Compensation & Logistics
- Base salary: $185,000 – $220,000 depending on experience
- Bonus eligible
- Full benefits package
- Based in Los Angeles, CA — hybrid schedule
- Company name and full details shared upon initial interview
We are an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.
Pay: $185,000.00 - $220,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Employee discount
- Health insurance
- Health savings account
- Paid time off
- Parental leave
- Vision insurance
Application Question(s):
- Have you personally owned OTB management and financial reconciliation (tops-down/bottoms-up) at a category or division level?
- Have you led assortment strategy across both third-party brands and private-label programs?
- Have you built or materially influenced demand forecasts, size curves, or pricing models using statistical analysis (not solely system-generated outputs)?
- Describe a time you led a merchandise or inventory correction initiative. What was broken, what actions did you take, and what measurable results did you deliver?
- Provide a specific example of how you have used AI or automation to improve planning, forecasting, or buying decisions. Include tools used and measurable results.
- Have you directly managed a buying team with full performance accountability (hiring, development, performance management)?
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Los Angeles, CA 90021
