Senior Planner (Dubai)

SUMMARY:
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POSITION INFO:
ENVIRONMENT: A global Luxury Retailer seeks the expertise of a forward-thinking Senior Planner to join its high-performance team in Dubai. You will own merchandise financial planning and in-season performance management for assigned brands and categories. You will translate commercial strategy into seasonal budgets, assortment and range plans, open-to-buy controls, allocation decisions, and pricing actions. Through WSSI, post-season analysis, store grading, replenishment reviews, and weekly performance reporting, you will protect sales, margins, availability, and stock productivity. The role partners closely with Buyers and management to identify exceptions, reforecast plans, manage markdown exposure, and ensure product launches and replenishment reach stores and wholesale partners on time. Success means stronger plan accuracy, healthier forward cover, fewer stock-outs, improved sell through, and commercially disciplined inventory decisions.   DUTIES: ·        Own annual budgets, seasonal strategies, and open-to-buy plans across brand, department, class, sub-class, and item levels, aligning sales, margin, markdown, stock, inflow, and forward-cover targets with approved commercial strategy. ·        Build WSSI plans and performance reports that compare actual results with plan, expose sales, stock, inflow, and cover exceptions, and trigger timely corrective actions through weekly Buyer and department reviews. ·        Partner with Buyers to convert strategic objectives into seasonal range and buy plans, balancing quantities, options, store capacity, assortment grades, financial parameters, and customer requirements across medium and small stores. ·        Manage inventory availability by reviewing replenishment orders, warehouse receipts, store allocations, launch readiness, consolidation opportunities, ageing stock, and wholesale distribution to reduce stock-outs and improve ·        productive stock deployment. ·        Control sell-through, markdown, promotion, and end-of-season activity by analysing product performance, recommending price adjustments, and securing management approval for actions that protect margin and clear slow-moving inventory. ·        Maintain open-to-buy visibility by tracking orders, cancellations, excesses, underbuys, reforecasts, and monthly inflows, ensuring management has reliable information for financial and inventory decisions. ·        Conduct store and competitor visits to assess product performance, range composition, price positioning, customer needs, and store-specific requirements, converting observations into measurable planning and assortment actions. ·        Strengthen planning systems and reporting by protecting data integrity, identifying system gaps, and communicating enhancement requirements that improve performance measurement, decision speed, and operational control.   REQUIREMENTS: ·        You bring 5–8 years of relevant merchandise planning experience within fashion retail, with ownership of budgets, assortment strategies, inventory plans, open to-buy controls, and in-season performance management across meaningful commercial categories. ·        You combine strong commercial judgement with detailed analytical discipline. ·        You can move from brand-level financial targets to class, sub-class, item, store, and product decisions while protecting sales, margin, availability, stock productivity, and customer relevance. ·        You are an effective cross-functional partner for Buyers, management, warehouse teams, stores, and wholesale partners. ·        You communicate exceptions clearly, secure decisions, and follow actions through until plans are implemented and measurable outcomes improve. ·        You are organised, proactive, and comfortable working in a fast-moving retail environment. ·        You maintain accurate trackers and reports, investigate data or system issues, and use store visits, competitor observations, and performance evidence to sharpen recommendations. ·        Strong merchandise planning and retail analytics capability, including annual budgets, seasonal strategies, WSSI, open-to-buy, assortment planning, sell through, forward cover, markdown, and margin management. ·        Advanced analytical and organisational skills with the ability to interpret performance by department, class, sub-class, item, store, season, and product lifecycle, then recommend commercially sound actions. ·        Proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel-based planning, reporting, financial tracking, and scenario analysis; familiarity with retail merchandise planning or ERP systems is valuable.   Advantageous - ·        Postgraduate qualification such as an MBA in Retail Management, or specialist training from NIFT, Pearl Academy, or a comparable fashion and retail institution. ·        Experience planning fashion retail brands across stores and wholesale partners, including store grading, replenishment, product launches, allocation, promotions, and end-of-season activity. ·        Practical understanding of customer, competitor, and store-level product trends, with the confidence to challenge assumptions and influence Buyers, management, warehouse teams, and stores.