Senior Manager Planning and Trading - Football

Sits within the EU eCommerce Product Merchandising team, specifically the EU eCom Planning & Trading team, which owns the planning processes and commercial decisions that shape the seasonal range. It translates financial forecasts into seasonal open-to-buy plans for the respective categories and proactively manages business opportunities and risks. The role drives cross-functional alignment with key stakeholders to ensure monthly, quarterly and seasonal financial targets are achieved.

• Define and continuously optimise the pre-season strategy and Open-to-Buy plan for the respective categories, ensuring investment decisions align with market financial targets and commercial ambitions.
• Actively contribute to key seasonal and go-to-market milestones, translating Brand and BU strategies and initiatives into relevant Planning & Trading priorities.
• Develop robust business cases for future opportunities, assessing short-, medium- and long-term potential and impact.
• Own the monthly financial planning process for the respective assortment areas and lead key cross-functional Planning & Trading milestones, including monthly financial planning, weekly and monthly trading, and seasonal merchandise planning and buy sign-off, providing clear insights
• Recommendations and guidance to stakeholders.
• Drive in-season trading of the range, using sales, stock, traffic, conversion, sell-through and profitability insights to identify risks and opportunities and define clear commercial actions to maximise net sales and margin.
• Lead regular trading reviews, translating performance into actionable recommendations across product visibility, availability, pricing and promotional activity, while partnering with Buying and wider eCommerce teams to optimise range performance.
• Provide clear visibility of MTD, QTD and YTD assortment performance against the seasonal plan, identifying key trends, opportunities and risks across Own eCom, Partner Program and other Marketing Outlets.
• Partner with Global Sales Planning & Analytics to evolve reporting capabilities and develop innovative tools that deliver actionable insights and enable data-driven business decisions.
• Partner with the Planning & Trading Director to drive key transformational initiatives and lead the continuous evolution of Planning & Trading ways of working, optimising key milestones, processes and business routines through internal and external expertise and best-practice sharing.
• Lead and develop the team, setting clear priorities, effectively managing workload and performance and supporting individual and team development.

• BA / BS in Business, Marketing, Finance, Economics, or related field.
• 5+ years of overall work experience.
• Fashion / Sporting Goods Industry experience.
• Proven ability to successfully work in a highly cross-functional matrixed environment.
• Relevant people management experience.
• Strong knowledge of and passion for sport, with a particular interest in football.
• Enthusiastic about product, with deep expertise in merchandising and retail and a strong understanding of the end-to-end product lifecycle, including buying, planning and trading.
• Strong understanding of key assortment and digital KPIs (e.g., Traffic, AOV, PDP Views, CVR, ROS, Mark Down and Sell-Through), how they interconnect, and the commercial levers to drive improved performance.
• Self-motivated and passionate about deriving business insight from data, improving business processes, and solving problems.
• Experience in leading and developing teams, ensuring organisational efficiency through effective motivation, training and development, and building diverse, inclusive high-performing teams and talent.
• Advanced Excel skills and proficiency in spreadsheet analysis.
• Strong organisational and planning skills to handle multiple tasks and business partners.
• Solution-oriented with a focus on achieving results, and quick to learn new systems and tools.
• Highly motivated and flexible, with the ability to work in a deadline-driven environment.
• Excellent PowerPoint, communication and presentation skills, with the ability to translate complex insights into clear, compelling stories for a range of stakeholders.

• Power BI data visualisation tool is a plus.
• Previous relevant experience within an ecommerce environment: at least 3+ years trading planning, merchandising demand forecasting, or equivalent experience is a plus.