Inventory Planner

Position closes on Friday, 1 October 2010

Location: Beverly MA.
Company: Appleseed's
Reports To: Manager of Inventory Control

Position Summary:
Responsible to plan and buy pre-selected items based on historical and current fashion trends for each catalog, including negotiating initial buying terms, deliveries, back up and reorder timing with vendors in order to achieve initial fulfillment goals, maintaining a satisfactory stock level to fall in line with the company, department, and classification goals based on lead-times, revising forecasts, and making re-buy decisions in order to achieve company, department, and classification final fulfillment goals, following established policies, procedures, practices, requirements, and standards.

Essential Responsibilities:
·    Create detailed plans for each mailing by style, color and size.
·    Place initial buys with required delivery for each book, appropriate backup commitments, and accurate lead-time information.
·    Analyze product performance and make recommendations on repeat products, sale book candidates, color expansion
     or contraction, and size range offer.
·    Recommend appropriate action to liquidate merchandise to outlet store based upon overstock conditions, repeat in
     future catalogs at a reduced retail, and use in sale book and/or sell to outside vendors/jobbers.
·    Negotiate re-buys and cancellations including creating forecast revisions after book drops, placing re-buys, monitoring
     vendor compliance with negotiated deliveries and backups, and negotiating cancellations on late or overbought product.
·    Track and expedite merchandise on order including calling vendors on orders due, purchase order cancellations and
     extensions, executing through systems, backorder cancellations and item not available flags.
·    Resolve all quality issues with quality assurance (QA) and vendors, executing all merchandise letters, and initiating calls
     on RTV’s.
·    Generate weekly and monthly reports including historical sales and returns analysis.
·    Suggests alternate re-sourcing vendors.
·    Ensure the accuracy of the retail price for each sku on the master item file.

Essential Requirements:
·    Requires three (3) to five (5) years experience including merchandising and planning as well as buying.
·    Bachelor degree or equivalent in Retail, Marketing, or Business Administration, Logistics, or related field.


Orchard Brands offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience and an excellent benefits package including Health/Dental insurance, Life, Long Term and short Term disability insurance, flexible spending accounts, 401K match, EAP, and employee discount.  For consideration, please submit your resume, along with a cover letter and salary requirements to jobs@orchardbrands.com, fax to 800-673-8401.  Orchard Brands is an equal opportunity employer.