Cornell University

C-Suite Strategic Retail Planning Leader

New York, New York, United States

Led the enterprise-wide strategic merchandise and assortment planning functions, including sales and receipt planning by store and channel for all of Bloomingdale's.Led and motivated a customer-centric, high performing team of 6 VPs, 15 Directors, and 106 planning professionals to drive sales based upon analysis of historical data and trends.Collaborated with senior merchants to merge the brick & mortar and e-commerce buying and planning organizations, resulting in an omni-channel planning organization structure to better address the customer's cross- channel shopping behaviors.Led in the development of assortment and inventory optimization strategies to address increasing omni-channel business complexities, with a focus on getting merchandise closest to the source of customer demand, and minimizing/offsetting the margin drain associated with increasing customer return rates.As a member of Executive Committee member, weighed in on the major issues facing the organization, such as: sales/margin/expense targets, company policies, systems implementation, long-range planning, and in-season business strategies.

Bloomingdale's

EVP, Merchandise Planning, Allocation & Business Analytics

Developed sales, gross margin, and turnover targets by family of business, channel and location to ensure that teams built plans that supported the company's financial objectives.Ensured that channels and locations were planned and managed to appropriate growth rates, and that vendor plans appropriately reflected sales and margin opportunities.Managed the in-season forecasting process to exploit opportunities and minimize risks while maintaining fiscal accountability.Built the Bloomingdale’s merchandise planning and allocation organization from scratch.Reshaped the planning organization to make it less top-heavy, streamline decision-making, and provide more entry–level positions to develop talent.Partnered with Macy’s leadership to ensure that omni-channel systems were developed to support our financial and merchandising objectives.

SVP, Merchandise Planning & Allocation

Led the merchandise reporting and replenishment teams, supporting the central buying organization and 26 stores.Developed strategic plans for reporting and merchandising systems in collaboration with other May Company counterparts.Managed replenished inventory, representing 30% of the total sales volume.

Robinson's May

VP, Merchandising Information & Replenishment

Led the merchandise reporting and replenishment teams, supporting the central buying organization and 23 stores.Managed the merger of LS Ayres merchandising systems into Famous-Barr systems, which included department/class hierarchy, inventory and style level data.Managed replenished inventory.

John Vitale