Sr. Director, Merchandise Planning & Allocation - Care and Cleanup

About the Team

Our Merchandise Planning and Allocation (MP&A) teams are the driving forces behind making the organization’s product visions available to our consumers through calculated and strategic measures. Your involvement in sales and margin forecasts, promotional performance analysis, inventory management, and vendor relationships will play a critical role in obtaining goals while maintaining PetSmart’s reputation in the market as a trusted partner to pet parents.

About the Location

Collaborative Work Environment :

At PetSmart, teamwork and connection are core to how we thrive. This role is based at our Phoenix Home Office, with an expectation of working a minimum of four days in the office each week. In a standard work week, associates may work up to one remote “flex day” (with leader approval). Our hybrid approach is designed to foster strong collaboration while also supporting flexibility and individual success.

About the Job

The Sr Director Merchandise Planning and Allocation partners with the Director of Merchandise Buying to develop and lead overall division strategic vision, resources and execution plans that align with the corporate strategy.  This position leads all aspects of the strategic development and execution of merchandise planning, space optimization, assortment planning with localization, optimizing the product life cycle to maximize margins, and allocation planning and execution in order to achieve sales, margin, turn and other KPI’s.

Key Responsibilities :

• Achieves Sales, Margin, and Inventory Turnover and other KPIs as designated to plan
• Lead development of team including recruiting and coaching to build organization talent
• Develop overall division strategy vision, policies, resources, and execution plans to align to the corporate strategy
• Directs development of Merchandise plan and all business metrics within
• Participates in the seasonal, annual, and long-range strategic and financial planning across a wide array of vendor, customer and merchandising segments.
• Leads, executes and measure performance against the business planning and product creation calendars to drive timely and informed decision making
• Supports the VP to present within various strategic meetings for the division (i.e. Direction Setting, Marketing Execution meetings, Line Reviews, Open-To-Buy, Vendor, QBR, and other meetings)
• Owns the end-to-end management of inventory, including service and in-stock levels and dollar levels; owns the setting of and achieving targets for inventory productivity to support the sales and gross margin plans, maintain high levels of promotional product availability during promotional periods while minimizing ad residue, and optimizing end-caps, drive aisle, and in-line story telling and integration consistent with consumer shopping patterns.
• Directs targets and creation of vendor demand plans.  Effective and timely communication to vendors.
• In partnership with the pricing organization, supports delivering on the pricing strategy, optimizing margins across the life cycle, managing category elasticity, zone pricing, promotional price optimization, markdown optimization, and good / better / best pricing and assortment optimization and strategies while maintaining a deep understanding of competitor assortments and pricing.
• Collaborate with retail operations regarding sales driving opportunities
• Actively create and lead special projects that drive growth opportunities
• Execute division and category marketing plans in partnership with the Marketing Dept
• Build and submit division and category promotional plans including : Ads, Planner Locations, Promotional Offers, and Layouts,
• Develops the holistic understanding of category, consumer, and competitive dynamics; translates them into division portfolio plans that optimize revenue, margin, pricing and product cost
• Integrate processes and systems to optimize accuracy, efficiency, inventory productivity, space utilization, and margin optimization.

Skills :

Education :

About the Culture

At PetSmart, we work hard to create a culture where every associate feels like they truly belong and we celebrate the unique stories, backgrounds, and experiences our associates share.  These experiences not only bring new perspectives in shaping our Belonging culture but they’re core to PetSmart’s success.

Not sure if you meet 100% of the position requirements and whether you should apply? We’d still like to hear from you and encourage you to apply with us! You just may be the ideal candidate for this role, and if not this one, perhaps another position.

Our home office offers outstanding amenities in a fun and rewarding workplace including :

PetSmart provides an equal opportunity for all associates and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or other legally protected characteristics.