Merchandising Assistant / Specialist

We're Hiring: Merchandising Assistant / Specialist

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Mid-Level to Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to delivering relevant, competitive, and commercially successful product assortments across diverse markets and customer channels. Our teams collaborate across Merchandising, Buying, Planning, Marketing, E-commerce, Retail, Supply Chain, Finance, and Operations to ensure the right products are available at the right time, in the right quantities, and at appropriate price points.

The Role

We are seeking an analytical and commercially focused Merchandising Assistant / Specialist to support product assortment planning, product performance analysis, inventory management, pricing, promotions, seasonal launches, and day-to-day merchandising operations.

The ideal candidate will use sales, inventory, customer, market, and product data to support merchandising decisions, improve product availability, optimize assortment and stock levels, and contribute to commercial performance across retail, e-commerce, wholesale, or other customer channels.

Key Responsibilities

• Support merchandising strategies and seasonal plans aligned with business and commercial objectives.
• Assist with product assortment planning across categories, markets, stores, websites, marketplaces, and other sales channels.
• Maintain accurate product assortments, product hierarchies, attributes, descriptions, pricing, and merchandising data.
• Analyze historical sales, inventory, margin, sell-through, and product-performance data.
• Monitor daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal sales performance.
• Identify best-selling, slow-moving, declining, and emerging products.
• Prepare product-performance reports and merchandising dashboards.
• Support range reviews and assortment optimization activities.
• Analyze product productivity by category, SKU, location, channel, customer segment, and selling period.
• Support decisions regarding product introductions, extensions, reductions, substitutions, and discontinuations.
• Coordinate new-product launches and ensure products are available across required sales channels.
• Maintain launch calendars, product lists, key dates, and merchandising action trackers.
• Coordinate with Buying and Procurement teams regarding product availability, purchase requirements, and supplier commitments.
• Work with Supply Chain, Logistics, and Warehouse teams to monitor inbound stock and product availability.
• Track inventory levels, stock cover, sell-through, replenishment requirements, and stock risks.
• Identify potential stockouts, excess inventory, slow-moving products, and aging stock.
• Support replenishment recommendations based on sales trends, inventory levels, lead times, and planned demand.
• Coordinate product transfers or inventory reallocation between locations and channels where applicable.
• Support markdown, clearance, promotional, and stock-liquidation activities.
• Analyze the performance of promotions, discounts, campaigns, and merchandising initiatives.
• Monitor pricing, competitor pricing, promotional activity, and market positioning.
• Support pricing reviews and identify potential pricing opportunities or inconsistencies.
• Maintain accurate retail, wholesale, and e-commerce pricing information.
• Coordinate with Marketing and E-commerce teams on product launches, campaigns, promotions, and digital merchandising.
• Support website and marketplace merchandising, including product placement, category organization, search visibility, and promotional positioning.
• Ensure product information, images, specifications, descriptions, and attributes are accurate and complete.
• Monitor online product availability, product visibility, assortment compliance, and content accuracy.
• Support visual merchandising activities where applicable, including product presentation, display standards, planograms, and seasonal guidelines.
• Coordinate merchandising requirements with stores, retail teams, sales teams, and channel managers.
• Track store or channel compliance with assortment, pricing, display, and promotional requirements.
• Gather feedback from stores, sales teams, customers, and other stakeholders to identify product opportunities and issues.
• Monitor customer preferences, purchasing patterns, product reviews, and market trends.
• Conduct competitor and market research to support assortment and merchandising decisions.
• Identify emerging trends, product opportunities, category gaps, and changing customer needs.
• Support category reviews and prepare product, market, and commercial analysis.
• Assist with seasonal planning, promotional calendars, range launches, and commercial events.
• Maintain merchandising calendars covering launches, promotions, markdowns, campaigns, and key trading periods.
• Coordinate product samples, product information, approvals, and merchandising materials.
• Support supplier and brand coordination related to product information, launches, availability, pricing, and promotional activities.
• Monitor supplier product availability and communicate potential merchandising risks.
• Support product lifecycle management from introduction through growth, maturity, markdown, and discontinuation.
• Analyze product contribution to sales, gross margin, inventory productivity, and overall category performance.
• Assist with open-to-buy, inventory budgets, sales targets, and merchandise financial planning where applicable.
• Support demand and inventory planning by providing merchandising insights and sales assumptions.
• Coordinate with Finance on sales, margin, markdown, budget, and profitability reporting.
• Track merchandising KPIs and prepare regular management reports.
• Maintain accurate merchandising data in ERP, merchandising, planning, PIM, e-commerce, BI, and other approved systems.
• Identify opportunities to improve merchandising processes, reporting, data quality, and workflow efficiency.
• Support automation, analytics, and digital merchandising initiatives.
• Maintain confidentiality of sales, pricing, supplier, customer, and commercially sensitive information.
• Participate in continuous-improvement initiatives to improve assortment quality, inventory productivity, customer experience, and commercial performance.

Key Performance Indicators

• Sales revenue
• Sales growth
• Gross margin
• Gross margin percentage
• Sell-through rate
• Stock turnover
• Inventory productivity
• Stock cover
• Stock availability
• Stockout rate
• Excess inventory rate
• Slow-moving inventory
• Aging inventory
• Product productivity
• Sales per SKU
• Margin per SKU
• Category performance
• Assortment productivity
• New-product performance
• New-product launch completion
• Product launch availability
• Promotional sales performance
• Promotional uplift
• Markdown effectiveness
• Markdown rate
• Full-price sell-through
• Price competitiveness
• Pricing accuracy
• Product data accuracy
• Product content completeness
• E-commerce product availability
• Digital merchandising performance
• Store merchandising compliance
• Assortment compliance
• Inventory reallocation effectiveness
• Replenishment effectiveness
• Forecast support accuracy
• Merchandising calendar adherence
• Reporting accuracy and timeliness
• Customer engagement and conversion
• Continuous-improvement completion

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in merchandising, retail, e-commerce, buying, category management, commercial planning, product management, inventory planning, or sales operations, preferably within retail, fashion, consumer goods, e-commerce, marketplaces, wholesale, hospitality, or other product-focused environments.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Strong understanding of merchandising and product-assortment principles.
• Experience analyzing sales, inventory, margin, sell-through, and product-performance data.
• Strong commercial awareness and understanding of retail or e-commerce trading dynamics.
• Experience supporting assortment planning, product launches, seasonal activities, and promotions.
• Strong understanding of inventory availability, stock cover, replenishment, and stock productivity.
• Experience identifying best sellers, slow movers, excess stock, and product-performance trends.
• Strong analytical and numerical skills.
• Experience preparing merchandising reports, dashboards, and commercial analysis.
• Strong Excel and spreadsheet capabilities.
• Familiarity with ERP, merchandising, inventory, planning, PIM, e-commerce, BI, or retail-management systems.
• Understanding of product lifecycle management and category performance.
• Experience supporting pricing, markdown, promotional, and competitive-analysis activities.
• Strong attention to detail and product-data accuracy.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to coordinate effectively with Buying, Planning, Procurement, Supply Chain, Marketing, E-commerce, Finance, Sales, and Operations teams.
• Strong organizational and project-coordination capabilities.
• Ability to manage multiple products, categories, deadlines, and priorities.
• Strong problem-solving and commercial decision-support skills.
• Ability to interpret customer, market, competitor, sales, and inventory information.
• Experience working with suppliers, brands, retailers, marketplaces, or commercial partners.
• Strong understanding of confidentiality and commercially sensitive information.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
• Experience working with international and distributed teams is highly desirable.
• A proactive, analytical, commercially minded, and customer-focused approach.