Retail Buyer/Planner

The Retail Buyer/Planner is responsible for the purchasing and planning of new product and partnering with cross functional partners to execute the merchandising strategy by delivering exciting, commercially-focused product assortments that meet our customers’ needs and drives revenue to meet and/or exceed financial goals.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Purchasing of New Goods & Beverages

• Manages company’s purchased product and beverage lines.
• Creates analytics; determines additions and deletions of product, identifying opportunities to grow the business by staying in stock with the right items.
• Controls space allocations and fixture needs and directs stores on product placement.
• Coordinates rollout of any new upcoming assortments and new product to all stores, and manages plan-a-guides by store grades.
• Sources and tests new vendors.
• Negotiates product pricing directly with vendors, places companywide orders, develops promotional schedules, and creates store sales plans to directly impact overall performance.
• Works closely with vendor partners on promotions and contests, supplying updates/results to vendor, Merchandising Project Manager, and stores.
• Creates weekly allocations for purchased product & beverages, uploads allocations and communicates to Supply Chain for processing and delivery. Follows-up on outstanding issues and concerns.
• Creates and maintains a purchased product database, ranks and allocates product based on sell-through to increase revenue and decrease shrink and margin loss.
• Utilizes reporting to identify trending stores to capture opportunities as well as clarity of down trending stores and ways to turn the identified stores around.
• Conducts price comparison research weekly on multiple platforms, ensuring our competitive pricing edge.
• Conducts store visits to support stores with merchandising ideas, product concerns, and conducts market research on potential new product additions.
• Implements improvements through store visits, product flow, category analysis and other findings to improve purchased product sales.
• Researches, analyzes, and selects new product items to include in our assortment.
• Manages, enters, and communicates new and continuing markdowns and promotions.
• Manages and maintains sales goal information in DOMO and other company systems.
• Performs PO order entry, SKU, and cost maintenance.
• Drives the open to buy (OTB) process, meets turn targets, and develops recommendations for space planning improvements, category-level inventory receipt plans and markdown plans.
• Develops in-season forecasting and monitor pricing adjustments as necessary. Manages business trends for sales and gross margin performance.
• Builds seasonal replenishment forecast and share with retail team.

Replenishment Management

• Runs weekly selling for store fill in’s to keep consistent flow of product to the stores.
• Works weekly to push out other product at the DC (varies monthly) to stores based on sales until back stock is depleted
• Utilizes reports (monthly and quarterly) to analyze, by store, categories to determine best store allocations to improve store selling and increase turn, diving deep into the details to make a difference.
• Creates and manages store rankings (15 categories).

Manage Goodwill Southern California Logo Product

• Reviews sales and reorder as needed to keep store stocked for employee sales.
• Inventories items to ensure sizes are in stock- R/O as needed. Merchandising at Lincoln store.

Merchandising

• Visits stores to merchandise new and existing product to create visual direction/ideas of purchased product, and communicates to stores any incremental sales suggestions.
• Checks signage on key/core items and overall shape of the store and backroom. Especially important for seasonal buys (Halloween, holiday and BTS) as well as when we launch a new product.
• Sets Purchased Product standards, occasionally visits stores unannounced with checklist of requirements set on purchased product, reports findings to VP of Retail, COO and Merchandising Project Manager.
• Rolls out new product fixtures, assists stores with setting/merchandising the fixtures and follows-up on maintaining the standards to grow sales. Measures results of fixtures on an ongoing basis.

Marketing

• Works closely with our marketing division to introduce new product launches and seasonal product for e-mail blasts and signage.
• Manages marketing vendor contests.
• Orders samples for marketing needs and researching ideas for product presentation, relaying our vision to marketing.

Transportation Partnership

• Works closely with transportation team on best practices and ways to improve warehouse door to store delivery.
• Communicates delivery changes and special projects (such as seasonal deliveries such as Halloween or fixtures).
• Makes occasional trips to Ontario DC to meet with team and walk purchased product. 

Education & Experience       

• Minimum 3 years retail buying required.
• Bachelor or Associate’s degree or equivalent from a two-year college or technical school in retail merchandising or business preferred.

• Excellent customer relations and people skills.
• Retail assortment planning and allocations experience preferred.
• Communication skills to precisely and clearly convey orders to vendors in timely manner.
• Analytical mindset with attention to details.
• Ability to work with all levels of employee and vendors to produce results in a fast paced environment.
• Ability to work with minimal supervision while multitasking different projects.  
• Must have intermediate knowledge of computer programs in a Windows environment, including Word, Excel and E-mail. As well as previous experience in an Oracle based system

Computer Skills

• Accounting software
• Inventory software
• Order processing software
• Project Management software

Pre-Employment Testing

• Drug Screen 8 - Panel
• Background Check
• MVR

Goodwill Industries in Southern California is an equal opportunity employer and gives consideration for employment to qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. If you'd like more information about your EEO rights as an applicant under the law, please click here: http://www1.eeoc.gov/employers/upload/eeoc_self_print_poster.pdf

Goodwill gives preferential consideration to persons with barriers to employment.   Persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply. 

Equal Employment Opportunity

Goodwill is committed to a policy of equal employment opportunity for applicants and employees. 
Employment decisions will comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination in employment including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and any other characteristic protected by federal or state law.  

Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disabilities

In furtherance of our commitment to end discrimination against qualified disabled individuals, and in accordance with the provisions of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and all regulations properly issued thereunder to protect the rights of qualified disabled persons, it is Goodwill's policy that no program or activity administered by it shall exclude from participation, deny benefits to or subject to discrimination any individual solely by reason of his or her disability.   Equal employment opportunity will be extended to qualified disabled persons in all aspects of the employer-employee relationship, including recruitment, hiring, upgrading, training, promotion, transfer, discipline, layoff, recall and termination.   We further affirm that we will provide reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified disabled employee or applicant.  

It is the policy of Goodwill to provide reasonable accommodations for qualified persons with disabilities who are employees or applicants for employment.  If you need assistance for accommodations to interview because of a disability, please notify the Human Resources Department. 
Employment opportunities will not be denied to anyone because of the need to make reasonable accommodations for a disability.