Director - Merchandise Planning

INSPIRE | EXHILARATE | DELIGHT

For over six decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. The Group, in its endeavour to excel as a hybrid retailer, has reinforced its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of eight owned brands and over 300 international brands in the luxury, beauty, fashion, and art de vivre categories. More recently, the Group expanded its expertise into new categories of luxury watches, jewellery, and eyewear.

Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken with the customer at heart. Be it constantly reinventing itself or focusing on innovation to provide luxury experiences at over 750+ experiential retail stores, online and through mobile apps, each touch point leads to delighting the customer.

Today, Chalhoub Group stands for 14,000 skilled and talented professionals across seven countries, whose cohesive efforts have resulted in the Group being ranked third in the Middle East and first in Saudi Arabia as a Great Place to Work.

To keep the innovation journey going, the Group has set up “The Greenhouse”, which is not just an innovation hub, but also an incubator space and accelerator for start-ups and small businesses in the region and internationally. This is just one of the several initiatives taken by the Group to reinvent itself, catalysed by forward thinking and future-proofing. The Group has also been embedding sustainability at the core of its business strategy with a clear commitment towards people, partners and the planet, and by being a member of the United Nations Global Compact Community and signatory of the Women's Empowerment Principles.

What You'll Be Doing

As a Supply Chain Merchandising Director, you will use your knowledge, experience and influencing skills to develop a robust and agile Supply Chain able to support the Commercial omni channel needs of the business for years to come. You will be responsible for setting up the Merchandise Category Supply Chain Strategy thus strengthen the group’s ability to maximise revenue while being agile in our decision making. The role will be responsible to lead the transformation along with the Supply Chain managements of each Sub vertical and X functionally. Aim being that we build not only for tomorrow but for beyond.

Responsibilities

You will be a critical partner for VP of Planning and the wider team, and the business leaders in the Multi-Brand space. Your responsibilities will include:

• Drive and oversee the Merchandise Category Planning Strategy taking into account Market benchmarking (external and internal), Brands specifics as well as Commercial Business strategy.
• Drive the conversation to deliver a Merchandise Category Blueprint by collaborating with other departments through effective and efficient stakeholder management, fluid communication and Data driven recommendation
• Lead the purchasing process by driving the OTB and establishing a purchasing strategy in line with the business targets balancing networking capital, margin and product availability.
• Manage the inventory levels, ensuring availability while balancing cost with the customer in mind. Identify stock exit plans taking into account all business drivers.
• When needed, deep dive into business performance understanding drivers, proactively initiate course of action ensuring that the direction is inline with Business Strategy.
• Shape our future by driving Continuous Process Improvement throughout the organisation looking beyond the silos prepare Return on Investment Scenarios including Risk assessment to quantify profitability of System / Process design change.
• Own and Drive Talent management within your team to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge necessary to perform their jobs effectively
  
  

Drive the transformation for the business to ensure resource and tools are in line to deliver company strategy.

What You’ll Need To Succeed

• Bachelor or master’s degree in business, Supply Chain or related field
• 10+ years of experience in Retail /Distribution, with at least 5 years in a management role
• Buying/Merchandising/Planning function in a global brand in FMCG, Luxury, B to B, Brand or Retail
• Proven track record of successful merchandise planning and execution
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to use data to make decisions
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and presentation skills
• Highly organized and detail-oriented, with strong project management skills
• Familiarity with ecommerce and omnichannel retailing
• People management experience
  
  

What We Can Offer You

With us, you will turn your aspirations into reality. We will help shape your journey through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers diverse career paths for those who are extraordinary, every day.

We recognise the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies as well as exclusive employee discounts.

We Invite All Applicants to Apply

It Takes Diversity Of Thought, Culture, Background, Differing Abilities and Perspectives to truly Inspire, Exhilarate and Delight our customers. At Chalhoub Group, we are committed to inclusion and diversity.

We welcome all applicants to apply and be part of our exciting future. We ensure equal opportunity for all our applicants without regard to gender, age, race, religion, national origin or disability status.