The Director of Planning & Allocation is a strategic and highly-detailed leader responsible for driving OVME's financial strategy, ensuring sales, margin, gross profit, and inventory objectives are met. Highly entrepreneurial in nature, this role provides the opportunity for someone to design and implement the processes to support a high-growth company in an ever-evolving landscape of product and service offerings to our clients.
This leader plays a pivotal role in aligning financial planning with business strategy and objectives, optimizing assortment strategies and inventory flow, and driving data-driven insights and decision-making to enhance customer value and business performance. Through strong cross-functional partnerships with the CEO, Finance, Marketing, Operations, Studio teams, and vendors and suppliers, this role ensures executional excellence and continuous improvement in planning and allocation processes.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Leadership & Financial Planning

· Develop, execute and lead the company’s Sales and Operations Planning process to align finance, marketing, operations and field with strategic revenue and gross margin goals

· Lead Open-to-Buy (OTB) management – including demand and supply planning – aligning buying strategies, inventory flow, and markdown optimization to maximize profitability and minimize risk

· Provide actionable insights from data in multiple disparate sources to guide business decisions, ensuring agility in responding to shifts in consumer demand, market conditions and studio performance

· Oversee all financial reviews and milestone meetings for planning, buying, margin, and inventory; guide the executive leadership team and Finance with analysis that provides a consolidated roll-up of company KPIs

· Monitor market trends and competitive activities to proactively adapt strategies and maintain a competitive edge in the industry

Inventory Planning & Allocation

· Direct and guide the end-to-end inventory planning process, from “pre-season” financial planning to “in-season” execution, ensuring inventory optimization, productivity, and markdown strategies drive profitable growth

· Oversee studio performance and inventory levels, driving sell-through rates and markdown strategies, ensuring a customer-led and data-driven approach to inventory management and strategic promotions

· Evaluate the Return on Investment (ROI) of new product and service opportunities; assess potential risks vs. upside to recommend the best course of action

· Oversee all master data management and the weekly publication of standard reporting and ad hoc analysis

· Lead implementation of standardized reports for merchandise OTB, product and service category recaps, selling and hindsight documents

Operational Excellence & Process Optimization

· Identify opportunities to streamline and standardize processes, ensuring best practices in merchandise planning and allocation

· Lead the integration and adoption of advanced analytics and new technology solutions, to improve forecasting accuracy and inventory management, while optimizing planning decisions and driving efficient execution

· Maintain a relentless focus on continuous improvement, efficiency, agility and automation

Cross-Functional Partnership & Innovation

· Build strong partnerships with corporate teams, studio teams, vendors and suppliers to ensure seamless execution of strategic initiatives

· Drive continuous improvement by identifying and implementing new tools, processes, and automation that enhance ways of working across via efficiency, accuracy, and speed to market

· Act as a thought leader in inventory planning and studio operations, driving innovation in OVME's planning, allocation and inventory management capabilities

· Hold weekly update calls with the finance, marketing, operations and studio leaders to review studio performance

· Conduct regular meetings with corporate and studio teams to review business performance and provide actionable insights that optimize inventory management

Minimum of 15 years of relevant work experience and five years in a senior leadership role

· Extensive operational expertise in business planning and analysis required: merchandise planning, inventory management, allocation, SKU planning, S&OP planning, budgeting, and demand planning

· Proven ability to partner with and inspire high-performing teams, creating a culture of collaboration, accountability, and innovation

· Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with experience leveraging AI, analytics tools, and forecasting models to drive decision-making

· Proficient in the evaluation, implementation and adoption of POS and ERP systems (e.g. Zenoti and NetSuite). Expert computer skills: Power BI, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.