Ecommerce Demand and Inventory Planner

Big Blanket Co makes ridiculously oversized blankets and comfort products designed to make life a little cozier. What started with the Original Stretch™ 10' x 10' blanket has grown into a broader assortment of blankets, loungewear, bedding, accessories, and seasonal and limited-edition collections.

As we continue to scale, we're looking for an Ecommerce Demand & Inventory Planner to help us answer one deceptively simple question:

How much product should we have, where should we have it, and when?

This role will sit at the intersection of inventory, ecommerce, finance, product, operations, and marketing — turning sales trends and business strategy into an actionable demand and inventory plan. 

The role: 

The Ecommerce Demand & Inventory Planner will own Big Blanket Co's demand forecasting and inventory planning process across our product portfolio. You'll build the system that connects annual sales goals to monthly inventory targets, SKU-level forecasts, rolling purchase orders, new-product buys, promotional strategy, and inventory health. You'll help us make better decisions about both sides of the inventory equation: ensuring we have enough inventory to capture demand without tying up unnecessary cash in products that aren't moving quickly enough.

This isn't a role where you simply maintain a forecast.

We want someone who serves as the connective tissue between what we want to sell, what customers are likely to buy, and what we ultimately need to purchase.

Your responsibilities:

Demand Planning

• Build and maintain rolling demand forecasts at the product, SKU, size/color, and category level.
• Translate annual company revenue targets into monthly and seasonal demand plans.
• Account for historical sales, seasonality, growth trends, promotions, marketing activity, product launches, pricing changes, stockouts, and other demand drivers.
• Regularly compare actual performance to forecast and identify the reasons behind meaningful variance.
• Continuously improve forecast accuracy and document assumptions and learnings.
• Develop multiple demand scenarios when appropriate—including base, upside, and downside cases—to help the business understand inventory and cash implications.

Inventory Strategy

• Establish target inventory levels by month and category based on forecasted demand, lead times, service-level goals, inventory turns, and working-capital objectives.
• Build an annual inventory plan to answer crucial inventory and investment questions.
• Establish and monitor key inventory metrics including weeks of supply, inventory turns, sell-through, in-stock rate, aged inventory, excess inventory, and stockout risk.
• Proactively identify inventory risks and recommend corrective actions.

Purchase Planning & Replenishment

• Translate demand forecasts and inventory targets into rolling purchase recommendations.
• Determine what we need to order, how much we need to order, and when those orders need to be placed based on manufacturing and transportation lead times.
• Maintain forward-looking visibility into inventory receipts and projected stock positions.
• Partner closely with Operations and Supply Chain on purchase orders, production timing, inbound inventory, vendor capacity, and changing lead times.
• Recommend when purchase orders should be accelerated, delayed, increased, reduced, or canceled as demand changes.
• Create a repeatable planning cadence that connects demand forecasting to ongoing PO generation rather than relying on one-time seasonal buys.

Limited Editions & New Product Planning

• Develop the inventory strategy for Limited Editions, seasonal collections, and new-product launches in partnership with Product, Marketing, and Ecommerce 
• Create launch forecasts using comparable-product performance, category trends, customer behavior, marketing plans, and historical launches.
• Conduct post-launch and post-season analysis to improve future buys.
• Help establish a disciplined Limited Edition framework that creates excitement and scarcity without creating unnecessary inventory risk.

Pricing & Promotional Planning

• Provide the inventory and demand intelligence that informs pricing and promotional decisions.
• Model the expected impact of discounts, promotions, bundles, and pricing changes on demand, margin, sell-through, and inventory position.
• Identify where inventory conditions may warrant accelerating demand through promotion—and where strong demand or constrained supply may justify reducing promotional pressure.
• Partner with Ecommerce, Finance, and Marketing to evaluate promotional scenarios before they launch.
• Measure promotional lift and incorporate those learnings into future forecasts.
• Help the business move from a static promotional calendar toward increasingly inventory-aware and demand-aware pricing decisions.

Marketing & Creative Planning

• Translate inventory and demand insights into clear recommendations for the Marketing and Creative teams.
• Identify products, categories, and launches where demand needs to be created, maintained, or moderated.
• Provide visibility into products with excess inventory, products at risk of stocking out, Limited Editions that are outperforming or underperforming expectations, categories requiring additional demand generation, products where paid-media investment could unlock incremental revenue, and products where marketing should be reduced because inventory is constrained
• Partner with Marketing to align campaign calendars, promotional events, product storytelling, and paid-media priorities with the inventory plan.
• Help answer not only "What do we expect customers to buy?" but also "What should we encourage customers to buy?"

What Success Looks Like

You'll help Big Blanket Co:

• Increase forecast accuracy
• Maintain healthy in-stock levels on high-demand products
• Reduce avoidable stockouts
• Reduce excess and aged inventory
• Improve inventory turns
• Improve cash efficiency
• Make better initial buys
• Make smarter reorder decisions
• Improve Limited Edition sell-through
• Create stronger alignment between inventory, marketing, promotions, and product launches
• Give leadership a clear, forward-looking view of demand and inventory risk

Most importantly, leadership should be able to ask: "If sales continue like this, what happens next?" — and you'll be able to answer.

What we’re looking for:

• 4–7 years of experience in demand planning, merchandise planning, inventory planning, ecommerce planning, buying, or a related function
• Strong experience within ecommerce, DTC, retail, consumer products, apparel, home, or another SKU-intensive business
• Demonstrated experience building SKU-level demand forecasts
• Strong understanding of inventory planning, replenishment, open-to-buy, weeks of supply, inventory turns, sell-through, and retail math
• Experience translating forecasts into purchase or receipt recommendations
• Experience planning promotions, seasonal products, new launches, or limited-edition assortments
• Advanced Excel or Google Sheets skills and comfort working with large datasets
• Experience with ecommerce, ERP, inventory, forecasting, or BI platforms
• Strong financial and analytical instincts
• Ability to distinguish signal from noise and turn analysis into a clear recommendation
• Comfortable making decisions with imperfect information
• Strong communicator who can explain complex planning concepts simply to non-planners
• Highly collaborative and comfortable working across Finance, Operations, Product, Ecommerce, and Marketing

We prefer candidates with experience in:

• a high-growth DTC brand on Shopify
• Establishing or rebuilding a demand-planning process
• Modeling promotional elasticity or markdown strategy
• Forecasting new products without significant sales history
• Managing long overseas manufacturing lead times
• Assortment planning and SKU rationalization
• Using modern forecasting, analytics, automation, or AI tools to improve planning

Requirements:

Approximately 40 hours / week

Monday-Friday

Primarily in-office (Springfield, Missouri) with the ability to work some hours remotely after onboarding

Compensation Package:

Competitive Wages & Paid Time Off

401(k) plan with employer contributions

Medical, dental, vision and life Insurance Options

Other Employee Perks: Education Assistance and Wellness program and more