Ecommerce Demand and Inventory Planner

Job Description

Job Description

Ecommerce Demand & Inventory Planner

Big Blanket Co makes ridiculously oversized blankets and comfort products designed to make life a little

cozier. What started with the Original StretchTM 10 x 10; blanket has grown into a broader assortment of

blankets, loungewear, bedding, accessories, and seasonal and limited-edition collections.

As we continue to scale, we're looking for an Ecommerce Demand & Inventory Planner to help us

answer one deceptively simple question:

How much product should we have, where should we have it, and when?

This role will sit at the intersection of inventory, ecommerce, finance, product, operations, and marketing

— turning sales trends and business strategy into an actionable demand and inventory plan.

The role:

• The Ecommerce Demand & Inventory Planner will own Big Blanket Co's demand forecasting and

inventory planning process across our product portfolio.

• You'll build the system that connects annual sales goals to monthly inventory targets, SKU-level

forecasts, rolling purchase orders, new-product buys, promotional strategy, and inventory health.

• You'll help us make better decisions about both sides of the inventory equation: ensuring we have enough inventory to capture demand without tying up unnecessary cash in products that aren't moving quickly enough.
• This isn't a role where you simply maintain a forecast.
• We want someone who serves as the connective tissue between what we want to sell, what customers

are likely to buy, and what we ultimately need to purchase.

Your responsibilities:

Demand Planning

● Build and maintain rolling demand forecasts at the product, SKU, size/color, and category level.

● Translate annual company revenue targets into monthly and seasonal demand plans.

● Account for historical sales, seasonality, growth trends, promotions, marketing activity, product

launches, pricing changes, stockouts, and other demand drivers.

● Regularly compare actual performance to forecast and identify the reasons behind meaningful

variance.

● Continuously improve forecast accuracy and document assumptions and learnings.

● Develop multiple demand scenarios when appropriate—including base, upside, and downside

cases—to help the business understand inventory and cash implications.

Inventory Strategy

● Establish target inventory levels by month and category based on forecasted demand, lead times,

service-level goals, inventory turns, and working-capital objectives.

● Build an annual inventory plan to answer crucial inventory and investment questions.

● Establish and monitor key inventory metrics including weeks of supply, inventory turns, sell-

through, in-stock rate, aged inventory, excess inventory, and stockout risk.

● Proactively identify inventory risks and recommend corrective actions.

Purchase Planning & Replenishment

● Translate demand forecasts and inventory targets into rolling purchase recommendations.

● Determine what we need to order, how much we need to order, and when those orders need to

be placed based on manufacturing and transportation lead times.

● Maintain forward-looking visibility into inventory receipts and projected stock positions.

● Partner closely with Operations and Supply Chain on purchase orders, production timing, inbound

inventory, vendor capacity, and changing lead times.

● Recommend when purchase orders should be accelerated, delayed, increased, reduced, or

canceled as demand changes.

● Create a repeatable planning cadence that connects demand forecasting to ongoing PO

generation rather than relying on one-time seasonal buys.

Limited Editions & New Product Planning

● Develop the inventory strategy for Limited Editions, seasonal collections, and new-product

launches in partnership with Product, Marketing, and Ecommerce

● Create launch forecasts using comparable-product performance, category trends, customer

behavior, marketing plans, and historical launches.

● Conduct post-launch and post-season analysis to improve future buys.

● Help establish a disciplined Limited Edition framework that creates excitement and scarcity

without creating unnecessary inventory risk.

Pricing & Promotional Planning

● Provide the inventory and demand intelligence that informs pricing and promotional decisions.

● Model the expected impact of discounts, promotions, bundles, and pricing changes on demand,

margin, sell-through, and inventory position.

● Identify where inventory conditions may warrant accelerating demand through promotion—and

where strong demand or constrained supply may justify reducing promotional pressure.

● Partner with Ecommerce, Finance, and Marketing to evaluate promotional scenarios before they

launch.

● Measure promotional lift and incorporate those learnings into future forecasts.

● Help the business move from a static promotional calendar toward increasingly inventory-aware

and demand-aware pricing decisions.

Marketing & Creative Planning

● Translate inventory and demand insights into clear recommendations for the Marketing and

Creative teams.

● Identify products, categories, and launches where demand needs to be created, maintained, or

moderated.

● Provide visibility into products with excess inventory, products at risk of stocking out, Limited Editions that are outperforming or underperforming expectations, categories requiring additional

demand generation, products where paid-media investment could unlock incremental revenue,

and products where marketing should be reduced because inventory is constrained

● Partner with Marketing to align campaign calendars, promotional events, product storytelling, and

paid-media priorities with the inventory plan.

● Help answer not only "What do we expect customers to buy?" but also "What should we

encourage customers to buy?"

What Success Looks Like - You'll help Big Blanket Co:

● Increase forecast accuracy

● Maintain healthy in-stock levels on high-demand products

● Reduce avoidable stockouts

● Reduce excess and aged inventory

● Improve inventory turns

● Improve cash efficiency

● Make better initial buys

● Make smarter reorder decisions

● Improve Limited Edition sell-through

● Create stronger alignment between inventory, marketing, promotions, and product launches

● Give leadership a clear, forward-looking view of demand and inventory risk

Most importantly, leadership should be able to ask: "If sales continue like this", "what happens next?" —you'll be able to answer.

What we’re looking for:

● 4–7+ years of experience in demand planning, merchandise planning, inventory planning,

ecommerce planning, buying, or a related function

● Strong experience within ecommerce, DTC, retail, consumer products, apparel, home, or another

SKU-intensive business

● Demonstrated experience building SKU-level demand forecasts

● Strong understanding of inventory planning, replenishment, open-to-buy, weeks of supply,

inventory turns, sell-through, and retail math

● Experience translating forecasts into purchase or receipt recommendations

● Experience planning promotions, seasonal products, new launches, or limited-edition

assortments

● Advanced Excel or Google Sheets skills and comfort working with large datasets

● Experience with ecommerce, ERP, inventory, forecasting, or BI platforms

● Strong financial and analytical instincts

● Ability to distinguish signal from noise and turn analysis into a clear recommendation

● Comfortable making decisions with imperfect information

● Strong communicator who can explain complex planning concepts simply to non-planners

● Highly collaborative and comfortable working across Finance, Operations, Product, Ecommerce,

and Marketing

We prefer candidates with experience in:

● a high-growth DTC brand on Shopify

● Establishing or rebuilding a demand-planning process

● Modeling promotional elasticity or markdown strategy

● Forecasting new products without significant sales history

● Managing long overseas manufacturing lead times

● Assortment planning and SKU rationalization

● Using modern forecasting, analytics, automation, or AI tools to improve planning

Requirements:

Approximately 40 hours / week

Monday-Friday

Primarily in-office (Springfield, Missouri) with the ability to work some hours remotely after onboarding

Competitive wages and PTO

Medical, Vision, and Dental benefits

Additional Employee Perks