About this role
About the Role
The Brand Planning lead is an essential contributor to the end-to-end management of the Gap/Gap Outlet business, sitting at the intersection of investment strategy, product strategy, and customer experience. Through close cross-functional partnership across the inventory management, merchandising, site merchandising, company planning, and commercial planning organizations, the brand planning lead facilitates all key business processes, and works as a close counterpart to the brand IM lead to foster data-based decision-making in weekly business management, monthly open-to-buy forecasting, and at key inventory investment milestones. This role provides significant exposure to leadership across the Gap/Gap Outlet organization, and helps provide, brand-wide perspective, and recommendations on business performance, risks, and opportunities.
What You'll Do
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In-Season
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Review business results in partnership with brand IM lead and divisional merchandise planning teams, and identifying actions to optimize KPIs
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Partner with merchandise planning, commercial planning, and pricing to validate commercial plan strategy, hindsight promotions, and guide future strategy
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Guide the merchandise planning team through the monthly open-to-buy process: provide timelines and forecasting guidance to the merchandise planning team; review forecast roll and identify risks + opportunities vs the finance forecast/budget; publish monthly receipt reconciliation data
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Work with company planning partners to hand off key forecast inputs (receipts, markdown conversion) and understand any variances between tops down/bottoms up forecasts
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Partner with brand inventory management lead to prepare for monthly forecast discussions with brand leadership
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Analyze business results and trend outlooks to identify emerging risks and opportunities, and recommend actions needed to achieve financial and operational targets.
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Provide forward-looking assessments of business performance, highlighting key drivers, risks, opportunities, and mitigation plans for leadership decision-making.
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Pre-Season
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Guide the development of quarterly financial targets by division and department, to ensure that plans reflect recent business trends and long range plan priorities, and align with budget parameters
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Provide key insights to buy plan position throughout the planning cycle, and identifying risks and opportunities in the investment profile
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Communicate with company planning regarding buy plan rolls and variances to budget targets, and partner with IM and merchandising leadership to prepare for investment milestones
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Participate in SME groups and transformation work across key planning functions, to support continuous improvement in processes and tools
Who You Are
- Strong commercial acumen with the ability to assess business performance, identify emerging trends, and translate insights into actionable recommendations that drive results.
- Ability to proactively evaluate risks and opportunities, develop scenario-based action plans, and influence cross-functional partners to deliver desired business outcomes.
- Enterprise mindset with a forward-looking perspective on market, customer, and business trends, balancing short-term performance needs with long-term growth objectives.
- Strong financial acumen and retail math skillset
- Ability to communicate clearly across functions, and collaborate effectively with a variety of cross-functional partners
- Extensive knowledge of all key planning responsibilities, and the ability to ‘connect the dots’ between them