UMENCO is seeking an experienced Merchandise Manager for a contemporary Australian womenswear brand that has recently commenced the launch of a bricks and mortar retail network in Australia and is undergoing rapid expansion across the US, EU, UK and Middle East. 

In this newly created role, the Merchandise Manager will execute independent merchandising strategies, and will be responsible for supporting the merchandise and buying team to create the seasonal allocation strategies across ecommerce, wholesale and retail.

The successful talent will assume lead responsibilities for providing insights and recommendations to the design and production teams, to ensure that buying is strategically optimised, and sell through targets are met. This will involve alignment with brand and finance teams to ensure that the quantity and timing of buys are within forecasted budgets.

Working collaboratively, they will assist with the creation, execution, and maintenance of the merchandise capacity and option plan strategy, analysing location stock capacity levels on a weekly basis, and taking the appropriate action to ensure that these levels align with the plan.

In performing their duties, the Merchandise Manager will liaise with the production and warehouse teams on the inbound and outbound movement and allocation of stock on a daily basis, and will work closely with the VM coordinator to ensure the allocation strategy aligns and supports the weekly retail visual merchandising and marketing directives.

They will be accountable to lead the planning and buying functions, maintaining merchandise and allocation reports and working to consistently manage the data integrity of inventory and merchandise across the group.

They will also work closely with buying and production to maintain an up-to-date delivery schedule to ensure the accurate and timely delivery of stock into the store and wholesale partners.

As well as this, the Merchandise Manager will uphold strong relationships with the eCommerce and retail team by partaking in store visits to develop a clear understanding of the business and customer. The talent we seek will present with experience allocating apparel in a similar role and will hold systems expertise in Microsoft Excel and enterprise retail software.

With a proven ability to work both collaboratively and autonomously being the key to success in this role, the successful talent will be passionate about analytics and will demonstrate meticulous attention to detail and accuracy, excellent written, verbal, and stakeholder communication skills, and outstanding time management and prioritisation abilities. This business provides an empowering environment that fosters a kind and open working culture supporting both personal learning and company growth.