Planning & Allocation Job Descriptions — Letter R

Two planning and allocation job descriptions begin with the letter R, and they are a natural pair. Replenishment is the in-season discipline that keeps the right stock flowing to the stores and channels that are selling it; Retail Planners are the head-office planners who build the sales, margin and stock plans that replenishment then executes against. The full descriptions below cover each role's duties, skills, qualifications and career path in detail, and the Planning category hub lists all fourteen planning roles on one page.

More Planning Job Descriptions by Letter:

The R Roles in Brief

Replenishment works at style, size and store level, on a weekly and sometimes daily rhythm: setting and tuning the triggers that release stock, watching cover and rate of sale, protecting proven sellers from running dry, and stopping supply to lines that have stopped selling so stock is not trapped where it cannot sell. Retail Planners work one level up, at department and business level, on the seasonal rhythm: building the sales, margin, stock and open-to-buy plans for a retailer's own stores and channels, forecasting from history and trade, and reforecasting as the season proves the first plan wrong.

How to Use This Letter

Read Replenishment if your interest is in-season stock flow and store availability, and Retail Planners if your interest is building the plan itself. The two connect directly to the rest of the category: Allocation under A sets the initial distribution that replenishment maintains, the Merchandise Planner under M is the buying-side counterpart of the retail planner, and the senior roles under S lead the whole function. The alphabet bar above reaches all eight working letters of this category — A, C, F, I, M, P, R and S.