PURPOSE & OVERALL RELEVANCE FOR THE ORGANIZATION
Turn insight into action, shape the assortment, and drive the commercial decisions that determine how our European eCommerce business performs. We’re looking for a commercially minded leader with a genuine passion for sport and football, who can combine strong product instinct with analytical thinking to drive the performance of our football business. Sitting within the EU eCommerce Product Merchandising team, the EU eCom Planning & Trading team owns the planning processes and commercial decisions that shape the seasonal range, ensuring we buy the right product, in the right quantities, at the right time to meet the needs
of our consumers.
The Planning & Trading Senior Manager is responsible for translating financial forecasts into seasonal open-to-buy plans for their respective categories. The role identifies and proactively manages business opportunities and risks, while driving cross-functional alignment with key stakeholders to ensure monthly, quarterly, and seasonal financial targets are achieved. You will play a pivotal role in bringing the European eCommerce category strategy to life by delivering a best-in-class merchandise financial plan, shaping the optimal pre-season assortment framework, and driving agile in-season trading by translating assortment and performance insights into clear commercial actions.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Define and continuously optimize the pre-season strategy and Open-to-Buy plan for the respective categories, ensuring investment decisions are aligned 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, providing clear insights, recommendations, and guidance to key stakeholders to support informed commercial
- decision-making.
- 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
- maximize 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 optimize 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 as well as 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 evolve engagement and ways of working across teams and functions.
- Lead key cross-functional Planning & Trading milestones, including Monthly financial planning process, weekly and monthly Trading, and Seasonal Merchandise planning & buy sign-off.
- Lead and develop the team, setting clear priorities, effectively managing workload and performance and supporting individual and team development.
- Lead the continuous evolution of Planning & Trading ways of working, optimizing key milestones, processes and business routines through internal and external expertise and best-practice sharing.
KEY RELATIONSHIPS
- eCom EU Buying
- eCom EU Off Price
- eCom EU Merchandising Ops
- eCom EU Planning & Analytics
- eCom EU Finance
- eCom EU Demand Planning
- eCom EU Digital Visual Merchandising
- eCom EU Digital Activation
- Global DTC Demand Planning
- EU Brand Finance & Business Units teams
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES
- 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 - ensure organizational efficiency through effective motivation, training and development. A builder of diverse, inclusive high performing teams and
- talents.
- Advanced Excel skills and proficiency in spreadsheet analysis, Power Bi data visualization tool is a plus.
- Strong organizational and planning skills to handle multiple tasks and business partners.
- Solution-oriented with a focus on achieving results. Quick to learn new systems and tools.
- Highly motivated and flexible, with the ability to work in 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.
- Fluent in English both verbally and written.
REQUISITE EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE / MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- BA / BS in Business, Marketing, Finance, Economics, or related field
- 5+ Years of overall work experience
- Fashion / Sporting Goods Industry experience
- Previous relevant experience within an ecommerce environment: at least 3+ years trading planning, merchandising demand forecasting, or equivalent experience is a plus.
- Proven ability to successfully work in a highly cross-functional matrixed environment.
- Relevant people management experience.
adidas celebrates diversity, supports inclusiveness and encourages individual expression in our workplace. We do not tolerate the harassment or discrimination toward any of our applicants or employees. We are an equal opportunity employer.