Associate Merchandise Planner

Associate Merchandise Planner – Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE:

RL) is a global leader in the design, marketing, and distribution of premium lifestyle products across five categories: apparel, accessories, home, fragrances, and hospitality. With more than 50 years of heritage, the brand continues to expand across international markets.

As an Associate Planner within the Merchandise Planning team, you will play a crucial role in optimizing inventory management, forecasting, and strategic planning to drive business performance. This position requires analytical skills, business acumen, and collaboration to support the company's merchandise planning efforts.

• Operation/Financial
  • Accurately interpret trade reports on a weekly, monthly, and ad‑hoc basis, summarising key messages and actions.
  • Utilise trade reports and own knowledge to influence forecasting & promotional/MD planning.
  • Analyse channel availability and take necessary trading actions.
  • Accurately forecast WSSI to reflect short- and long‑term risks and opportunities to KPIs, communicating impacts to planner.
  • Contribute to hindsight analysis and forward strategies, communicating key learnings to planner.
  • Support forecasting of line cards to maximise sales potential and optimise stock availability across channels, highlighting risks and opportunities to the team.
  • Oversee seasonal recodes.
  • Oversee delivery tracker and amend forecasts to reflect risks and opportunities, demonstrating awareness of the impact on end‑of‑season stock targets, communicating this to the planner.
  • Responsible for actioning seasonal markdowns & communicating to stores.
• Commercial Awareness
  • Lead regular store visits, analyse store reports prior to visits, and present feedback to the team.
  • Understand where Ralph Lauren fits within the broader retail environment through comprehensive competitor analysis and identify areas of opportunity & risk.
• Training and Development
  • Adopt a positive and proactive approach to your own training and development as well as that of peers.
  • Promote improvements to working practices and systems.
  • Support new team members in understanding the training and department processes.
  • Assist team in achieving personal goals.
  • Participate in company initiatives as appropriate.
  • Prioritise psychological safety within the team.
• Communications & Partnerships
  • Create and maintain strong working relationships within cross‑functional teams:
    Buying, Allocations, ECOM, and retail store teams.
  • Collaborate with Assortment Planning and Buying partners to review and assist in the formation of seasonal lessons learned, influencing future buys using analysis and historical data.

• Strong analytical and numerical mindset.
• Effective communicator – able to convey messages clearly and concisely to a variety of audiences.
• Capable of working autonomously, results‑oriented, and able to “think outside the box.”
• Demonstrates logical analysis and problem‑solving skills.
• Solution‑oriented and embraces change positively.
• Organises, prioritises tasks, and manages time well to meet deadlines.
• Demonstrates self‑awareness of impact on others and seeks feedback for improvement.
• Builds and maintains productive relationships within a team environment.
• Competent in Microsoft Excel and BI reporting tools.
• Attention to detail.
• Regularly recognises and praises good work.
• Leads by example and is a good associate role model.
• Desires to have fun at work and appreciates the product.

• Associate

• Full‑time

• Marketing and Sales
• Retail Apparel and Fashion