- Location
- London, UK, United Kingdom
- Type
- Full-time
- Seniority
- Director
- Source
- Workday
Description
NET-A-PORTER is the leading luxury fashion destination for women. The first digital platform of its kind, NET-A-PORTER has revolutionised the way women shop, delivering fashion, fine jewelry & watches and lifestyle collections to the world’s most discerning women.
Today, NET-A-PORTER continues to own discovery, inspiration, exceptional curation, customer experience and engaging storytelling. NET-A-PORTER creates exclusive, personalised experiences for its EIPs (Extremely Important People), with dedicated Personal Shoppers and invitation-only moments. PORTER, the editorial voice of NET-A-PORTER, entertains and inspires women through daily content, and tells the stories of incredible women across the globe. NET-A-PORTER is part of LuxExperience, the leading digital, multi-brand luxury group.
NET-A-PORTER are now seeking The Director of Merchandise Planning & Trading to join the team.
The Director of Merchandise Planning & Trading is expected to actively trade the business, identify opportunities and risks early, and influence decisions that improve performance.
Key Responsibilities
Trade the Business
- Drive daily and weekly trading performance across sales, margin, inventory, and key commercial KPIs against targets and budget.
- Analyze performance drivers across categories, designers, channels, and customer segments to identify risks and commercial opportunities.
- Translate insights into proactive trading actions to accelerate revenue, maximize margin, and manage overall P&L impact.
Sales & Demand Planning
- Own category and departmental sales plans.
- Analyze sell-through, rate of sale, and demand signals to evaluate performance gaps and revenue opportunities.
- Partner with Buying to optimize investment, align assortments to customer demand, and adjust buying commitments.
- Own the pre-season sales, margin, intake and stock plan, set the open-to-buy, and run the in-season reforecast cycle
Inventory & Stock Productivity
- Maximize stock productivity by actively managing inventory levels, intake flow, and sell-through.
- Mitigate inventory risk by proactively managing aged and slow-moving stock.
- Recommend strategic markdown and promotional activities that clear stock while protecting gross margin.
- Own availability targets by category and size, actively optimising stock levels to capture the full sales opportunity while balancing capital needs and markdown risk.
Commercial Performance & Insights
- Deliver clear, actionable commercial reporting that articulates performance drivers, root causes, and recommended solutions.
- Evaluate performance across designers, product groups, price points, and geographies to identify growth drivers and underperformers.
- Translate customer behavior data into commercial insights that inform trading and strategy decisions.
Pricing and Commercial Optimization
- Lead the pricing function, developing competitive pricing strategies across categories and regions that balance sales, margin, and brand equity.
- Monitor competitor pricing and market dynamics to identify strategic risks and price elasticity opportunities.
- Oversee promotional pricing and initial price architecture in partnership with Buying and Merchandising.
Cross-Functional Partnership
- Work closely with Buying and Merchandising to ensure commercial targets are translated into actionable plans.
- Partner with Website Trading, Marketing and Personal Shopping to maximise key trading moments and customer demand.
- Work with Finance to ensure financial targets are aligned.
- Collaborate with Operations to ensure stock availability and flow support the commercial plan.
- Be a strong commercial voice in weekly trading meetings, bringing recommendations rather than simply data.
Leadership & Strategic Evolution
- Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team, fostering a culture of accountability and excellence.
- Adapt team structure and processes to meet the evolving needs of the business, ensuring scalability and agility.
- Apply objective critical thinking and problem-solving to complex challenges, providing a fresh perspective that drives structural and operational improvement.
- Champion a collaborative environment, bridging the gap between data-driven insights and strategic decision-making.
What Success Looks Like
- Sales and margin consistently meet or exceed plan.
- Inventory productivity and sell-through improve.
- Less aged and slow-moving inventory.
- Faster reaction to changes in customer demand.
- Clearer and more decisive weekly trading actions.
- Stronger alignment between Buying, Merchandising, Website Trading, Marketing and Finance.
- The business is increasingly proactive rather than reactive.
What We’re Looking For
- Strong commercial and analytical mindset with a genuine passion.
- Significant experience in merchandising, planning, trading or commercial analytics, ideally within luxury fashion or ecommerce.
- Excellent understanding of sales, margin, inventory, sell-through, intake and budget planning.
- Highly numerate with strong data analysis skills.
- Ability to turn complex data into simple, actionable recommendations.
- Commercially curious, constantly asking why and looking for opportunities to improve performance.
- Comfortable challenging assumptions and influencing senior stakeholders.
- Highly organized, agile and able to operate at pace in a constantly changing environment.
- Strong communicator who can tell the story behind the numbers.
- An owner, not a reporter.
Besides a competitive salary, we can offer you:
- A pension that both you and the company contribute to.
- A portal with an array of discounts on things like theme park and cinema tickets.
- Our famous staff discount along with exclusive staff sales.
- Private medical insurance.
- Flexible working