Merchandise Planning Manager

About the role

We are hiring a Merchandise Planning Manager to join our Department Name team. This position reports to the Director, Merchandise Planning and takes Away further by architecting our multi-year omnichannel product roadmap and global pricing strategy, allowing us to further grow our ownership in the travel marketplace. As a key strategic leader, you will own portfolio profitability across DTC and Wholesale channels, drive commercial performance, and develop a high-impact team to scale Away's global footprint.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end planning process for assigned channels and categories, managing inventory pacing, monitoring channel trends, and reacting in-season to drive sales performance
• Build and maintain open-to-buy (OTB) plans by account, door, market, and/or SKU level aligned to financial pacing and margin targets, collaborating with commercial partners to inform pre-season assortment and volume recommendations
• Partner with B2B, Product, and Finance to balance shared product pools across competing channels, evaluating trade-offs to optimize total business performance without overexposing inventory
• Analyze historical trends, sell-through, and delivery cadences to surface actionable insights for product mix, pricing, and lifecycle strategies
• Serve as a core functional tester during user-acceptance testing (UAT) and system implementation for our planning and allocation tool, validating demand inputs and planning logic to ensure departmental readiness ahead of the 2027 rollout
• Translate topline demand forecasts into automated product-level buys following the 2027 launch of our planning and allocation tool, utilizing system analytics to optimize replenishment and lifecycle execution
• Maintain baseline demand-tracking models and current operational tools before the 2027 launch, generating quality benchmark data to support model calibration and ongoing operational pacing
• Proactively evaluate and adopt emerging AI tools and digital planning technologies to streamline inventory analysis, automate routine reporting, and enhance category execution

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in merchandise planning, demand forecasting, or inventory management within multi-channel retail environments
• Demonstrated expertise in building and managing Open-To-Buy (OTB) plans, financial pacing, gross margin optimization, and product lifecycle management