Demand Planner

Demand Planner
Full-Time, Remote
Working Hours: PST

Reports to:
CEO

Overview:
The Demand Planner owns the forecast. Everything downstream depends on it, so when the plan is wrong, we’re either sitting on stock we can’t sell or we’re out of our best seller in week three. We want someone who treats that as their problem.
This is a hands-on, remote role with real overlap with Pacific hours. Planning currently runs in spreadsheets, and it needs rebuilding as much as it needs running. Success looks like this: forecast error and bias at style level are reported every cycle and improving, core styles stay in stock through peak season, and weeks of cover sit inside target for most of the range. Your PO recommendations are ones we actually place.

Responsibilities:
Forecasting
Build the rolling demand forecast by SKU and channel (ecommerce in Canada and the US, our stores, and wholesale), and update it weekly.
Build it from sales history corrected for stockouts, and treat planned ad spend as an input. It’s our biggest demand lever, so it has to be in the model.
Own size curves by style and gender. In footwear, a wrong size run is how you end up out of stock and overstocked on the same shoe.
Get promotions, launches and seasonality into the plan before they happen, which means staying close to marketing and sales. We’re a rain brand, so fall and winter carry the year.
Report forecast accuracy every cycle and explain the misses. We care more about the explanation than the number.

Purchasing and Inventory
Turn the forecast into purchase order recommendations, working around lead times, MOQs, and whatever our suppliers are actually delivering rather than what they promised.
Watch inventory across our 3PLs and stores, and raise stockout and overstock risk early enough that we can do something about it.
Keep lead times, reorder points and safety stock current instead of letting them sit at whatever they were set to two years ago.
Model what a big promo or launch does to inventory and cash before we commit to it.

Reporting and Workflow
Prep the demand view and the assumptions behind it for our weekly performance review.
Use Claude to cut down the data cleanup and first-pass analysis, then check it before it goes anywhere.

Qualifications & Requirements:
Five years planning demand or inventory, or doing supply chain analysis.
Degree in supply chain, business, economics, statistics or similar, or the local equivalent.
Excel at a genuinely advanced level: complex formulas, pivots, cleaning up bad data, and models that someone else can follow. Excel is non-negotiable.
You’ve forecast before, and you know what forecast bias is and how to fix it.
You understand lead times, MOQs, safety stock and sell-through well enough to argue about them.
You’ve used an ERP or inventory system and can pick up a new one without hand-holding. We run NetSuite, Shopify Plus and our 3PLs’ systems.
You use AI tools and you check what they give you. We use Claude daily and expect you to as well.
Clear written English, and you can explain a forecast to someone in marketing without losing them.
You can work on your own, remotely, with real overlap with Pacific hours.
Curiosity, low ego, high agency, obsession with the work, and intelligence. These are the five things we hire for.

Nice to Have:
Footwear or apparel planning, where size curves matter.
Consumer products, DTC or ecommerce background.
Multi-brand or multi-entity planning.
SQL or a BI tool.

Skills

5+ years planning demand or inventory or doing supply chain analysis; advanced Excel (complex formulas, pivots, data cleanup, models others can follow); forecasting experience including bias; understanding of lead times, MOQs, safety stock and sell-through; ERP/inventory system experience; AI tool use; clear written English; works independently with overlap with Pacific hours.

Footwear or apparel planning (size curves); consumer products, DTC or ecommerce background; multi-brand or multi-entity planning;