Planner

Job Title:                     (Senior) Planner

Department:                 Planning & Allocation

Report to:                    Assistant Manager, Planning

Location:                     Shanghai

Since its launch in 1993 with a collection of six essential handbags, Kate Spade New York has always stood for optimistic femininity. Today, the brand is a global life and style house with handbags, ready-to-wear, jewelry, footwear, gifts, home décor and more. Polished ease, thoughtful details and a modern, sophisticated use of color—Kate Spade New York’s founding principles define a unique style synonymous with joy.

Kate Spade New York is part of the Tapestry portfolio – a global house of brands powered by optimism, innovation, and inclusivity.

The successful individual will leverage their proficiency in Planning to...

• Develop the top-line merchandising and financial plan and manage a monthly forecast process to measure results against the division’s financial and merchandising objectives
• Partner with Buying Team to create seasonal receipt plans that support product strategies and achieve inventory productivity metrics; evaluate the seasonal buys against financial targets
• Partner with Global Inventory Control team on monthly deliveries of rolling forecast KPI review.
• Partner with regional and global finance team on DR% and Margin control
• Manage the Open-to-Buy to support the Retail/ Outlet/ On-line business in Greater China
• Provide weekly selling reports and summarize results, provide insight on current trends and analysis of potential risk and opportunities to company executives
• Prepare multi-scenario analysis to understand the sales, margin and inventory impact of key business decisions
• Partner with Allocation/Inventory management team to ensure each store is in proper stock position going into each season
• Provide ad hoc reporting and projects requested by Senior Management
• Liaise with the Global Planning team in NY to align strategies and support global inventory management
• Provide direction to allocation/inventory management team and buying team on assortment cleaning and liquidation plan.

The accomplished individual will possess...

• Understanding of the key drivers of Retail/EC metrics and Inventory productivity
• Well-developed analytical skills with a demonstrated ability to generate executive summaries of detailed analysis
• Strong leadership and problem-solving skills, adaptability/flexibility and self-motivated initiative
• Strong interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to work in a collaborative environment across all levels of management
• Outstanding attention to detail
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Proven ability to multitask & prioritize in a dynamic, fast paced environment.
• High proficiency in Excel and Excel-based modeling and data management, including Pivot tables

An outstanding professional will have...

• Bachelor degree and above. More than 2 years relevant experience in fashion retail or premium brands, specialized in merchandise planning and analysis.
• Self-drive and motivation
• Creative aesthetic sense
• Flexible mind & teamwork

Our Competencies for All Employees

• Drive for Results: Can be counted on to exceed goals successfully; is constantly and consistently one of the top performers; very bottom-line oriented; steadfastly pushes self and others for results.
• Customer Focus: Is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers; gets first-hand customer information and uses it for improvements in products and services; acts with customers in mind; establishes and maintains effective relationships with customers and gains their trust and respect.
• Creativity: Comes up with a lot of new and unique ideas; easily makes connections among previously unrelated notions; tends to be seen as original and value-added in brainstorming settings.
• Interpersonal Savvy: Relates well to all kinds of people, up, down, and sideways, inside and outside the organization; builds appropriate rapport; builds constructive and effective relationships; uses diplomacy and tact; can diffuse even high-tension situations comfortably.
• Learning on the Fly: Learns quickly when facing new problems; a relentless and versatile learner; open to change; analyzes both successes and failures for clues to improvement; experiments and will try anything to find solutions; enjoys the challenge of unfamiliar tasks; quickly grasps the essence and the underlying structure of anything.
• Perseverance: Pursues everything with energy, drive, and a need to finish; seldom gives up before finishing, especially in the face of resistance or setbacks.
• Dealing with Ambiguity: Can effectively cope with change; can shift gears comfortably; can decide and act without having the total picture; isn’t upset when things are up in the air; doesn’t have to finish things before moving on; can comfortably handle risk and uncertainty.

Our Competencies for All People Managers

• Strategic Agility: Sees ahead clearly; can anticipate future consequences and trends accurately; has broad knowledge and perspective; is future oriented; can articulately paint credible pictures and visions of possibilities and likelihoods; can create competitive and breakthrough strategies and plans.
• Building Effective Teams: Blends people into teams when needed; creates strong morale
  and spirit in his/her team; shares wins and successes; fosters open dialogue; lets people finish and be responsible for their work; defines success in terms of the whole team; creates a feeling of belonging in the team.
• Managerial Courage: Doesn’t hold back anything that needs to be said; provides current, direct, complete, and “actionable” positive and corrective feedback to others; lets people know where they stand; faces up to people problems on any person or situation (not including direct reports) quickly and directly; is not afraid to take negative action when necessary.

Kate Spade is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer and we pride ourselves on hiring and developing the best people. All employment decisions (including recruitment, hiring, promotion, compensation, transfer, training, discipline and termination) are based on the applicant’s or employee’s qualifications as they relate to the requirements of the position under consideration. These decisions are made without regard to age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic characteristics, race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity, national origin, alienage, citizenship, disability, marital status, military status, pregnancy, or any other legally-recognized protected basis prohibited by applicable law. Visit Kate Spade at www.katespade.com.