Planning Manager, Central Planning

Serving the needs of all families with young children, Carter’s Inc. is the largest North American apparel retailer exclusively for babies and young children, encompassing Carter’s, OshKosh B’gosh, Skip*Hop and Little Planet brands. Meaningful work, constant learning, genuine people, and a community guided by core values that promote inclusion and innovation is in everything we do. There are many reasons to build your career at Carter's.

REVISION DATE:

How you’ll make an impact:

The Central Planning Manager is responsible for developing Brand financial plans, seasonal topside plans, and conducting scenario analyses, ensuring alignment with financial targets. This role also manages daily and quarterly sales plans across all channels and communicates with cross-functional business partners. They collaborate with cross-functional teams to manage budget deliverables, identify sales opportunities and risks, react to promotional changes, and improves forecasting processes. Additionally, they provide strategic insights through data analysis, present key reports to leadership, and lead the development of one direct report.

This role typical reports into the VP, Retail Planning and is based in our Buckhead, GA office.

High Level Planning Support (40%):

• Review consolidated Planning rollups to identify areas of opportunity or challenges that might not be noticed at lower levels. 
• Ability to quantify changes from year to year and build bridges to easily explain differences.  This would include sales bridges from product or macro initiatives, as well as AUR and margin changes
• Understand the impact of a macro promotion change to help inform Planning team of changes needed to plans/forecasts
• Partner with Marketing to evaluate the impact of promotions on sales and AUR.
• Collaborate with Merchandising, Marketing, FP&A, Operations, and Finance to manage budgets and promotional shifts.
• Work with BI teams to create Tableau reports for enhanced analysis and visualizations.
• Partner with DC on daily shipment forecast, alerting them ahead of time of any promotional changes that would necessitate staffing change.

Forecasting (20%):

• Manage multiple versions of in-season sales and margin projections responding to business trends.
• Run scenario analysis to assess the impact of business and promotional decisions.
• Research forecast variances, identify key drivers, and provide feedback to management.
• Build quarterly sales and margin forecasts for US stores and eCommerce channels.
• Develop daily sales plans by channel (sales $, units, AUR, discount, margin) using marketing calendars and historical promotional performance.
• Provide weekly sales guidance and forecasts to the distribution center (DC) based on sales expectations.
• Manage weekly flash reports of omnichannel business for strategic cross-functional partners.

Presentation management (20%):

• Prepare and present strategy decks for planning and merchandising teams related to upcoming buys and budgets
• Create executive summary reports regarding buy/ assortment performance for leadership meetings, including earnings and quarterly reviews
• Review Planning workload calendar identifying collision of key deliverable dates and proactively working with cross functional partners for solution

Analysis and Reporting (20%):

• Prepare consolidated materials and create executive reporting packages for key meetings and forecast cycles (monthly/quarterly E reporting, Monthly Business Review meetings, Leadership Team meetings, Earnings preparation, Board of Directors meetings)
• Perform complex analyses to support assortment, pricing, and inventory productivity strategies.
• Provide ad-hoc analysis to enable both tactical and strategic decision-making.
• Develop and recommend strategies based on findings from sales and marketing data.
• Continually strive to improve the quality of information, analytical techniques, processes, and systems.

We’d Love to hear from you if:

Must have:

• 3-5 years of experience in planning, forecasting, or Retail FP&A
• Advanced spreadsheet and data analysis skills (Excel, Tableau)
• Intellectual business curiosity.  Ability to conceptualize and transform an idea into direction for further analysis
• Self-Starter, Strong Communication Skills, Flexible, Collaborative
• Executive presence with ability to change the message depending on audience
• Ability to manage multiple changing priorities in a fast-paced environment
• Bachelor’s degree required.

Preferred skills and experience:

• Knowledge of the retail fashion industry is a plus
•  2-3 years of team management experience

Our Team Members:

• Lead Courageously: Have a strong sense of personal values that align with our Company values
• Collaborates Broadly: Build cooperation, trust, and thrive in a consensus driven environment
• Customer Focus: Proactively seek opportunities to leverage data and fact-based insights to serve customers and/or internal clients
• Drive Growth: Set aggressive goals and implement plans precisely
• Cultivates Innovation:  Respectfully challenge the "we’ve always done it this way" mentality and explore new ways to achieve desired outcomes

Make a career at Carter’s:

• Career Development: Success starts from within, and we have several paths from which you can choose to enhance your career evolution. From Carter’s University to Toastmasters to mentorship programs and more, we encourage you to utilize these tools to elevate your professional prowess.

NOTE:  This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive. The duties described may be changed or reassigned at the discretion of management, and the employee may be required to perform duties that are not listed in the job description.

Carters is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law.