Wantable Jobs in Usa

Full-Time / Exempt | Los Angeles, CA | Hybrid

Salary Range: $185,000 - $220,000 base + bonus eligibility

About This Opportunity

At Wantable, we’re redefining retail through personalization. Our membership-based model and proprietary technology empower us to curate products that help customers discover confidence and joy through style. 

As a data-driven fashion company, we combine human intuition with algorithmic intelligence to deliver personalized assortments – balancing creativity, analytics, and operational precision. 

We’re seeking a Director of Planning & Assortment to own the full merchandise planning and buying strategy across its women's and men's businesses. This is a high-autonomy, technically rigorous role for someone who is equally comfortable building a demand forecast, leading a buying team, and presenting a seasonal assortment strategy — all in the same week.

If you've built cohesive, commercially strong assortments, know merchandise financial planning cold, and are energized by the intersection of AI-powered analytics and real product judgment, this is a role worth a conversation.

Role Summary

The Director of Planning & Assortment owns assortment architecture and merchandise planning strategy end-to-end, and directly leads the buying team that executes against it. You'll ensure every theme and season delivers a cohesive, commercially optimized assortment across third-party brands, private label programs, and core business channels.

This role sits at the intersection of analytical planning and creative merchandising. You bring full product lifecycle fluency, from pre-season architecture through in-season optimization to end-of-life exit, and the buying acumen to translate plans into compelling product selections. This is a lean, low-bureaucracy environment where technical depth, independent judgment, and hard work directly shape customer experience and company performance.

What You'll Own

Assortment Planning & Architecture

• Own the end-to-end assortment plan, building cohesive assortments that balance breadth, depth, newness, and brand mix against financial targets and customer data.
• Build and maintain assortment architectures that reflect customer segmentation, attribute-level performance, trend signals, and white-space opportunities — serving as the single point of accountability for assortment integrity.
• Develop pre-season and in-season plans for both third-party and private label programs, managing each product lifecycle stage — introduction, growth, maturation, and exit — with precision.
• Define the seasonal vision and thematic direction for each assortment, then ensure buying execution delivers against it with a curated, intentional product mix.
• Set and manage targets for receipt flow, sales plan, margin, inventory turns, weeks of supply, and sell-through by category and brand type.

Buying Strategy & Execution

• Lead and direct the buying team, ensuring all purchasing decisions ladder up to the assortment plan and reinforce seasonal themes, category strategies, and financial targets.
• Guide buyers on brand selection, style-level decisions, and order quantities to keep assortments cohesive and free of redundancy, gaps, or drift.
• Own end-to-end buying strategy for assigned categories as needed, using AI-assisted trend forecasting, predictive analytics, and rapid in-season experimentation.
• Maintain and grow vendor partnerships that support speed, innovation, flexibility, and margin improvement.
• Partner with the internal Private Label team to drive private label growth informed by predictive trend data, attribute analytics, and lifecycle calendars — ensuring those assortments complement and strengthen the overall product mix.

Merchandise Financial Planning & Analytics

• Lead merchandise financial planning processes including OTB management, tops-down/bottoms-up reconciliation, and scenario modeling.
• Apply strong mathematical and statistical skills to demand forecasting, size-curve optimization, pricing elasticity analysis, and promotional impact modeling.
• Develop measurable success criteria tied to KPIs including margin dollars, inventory turns, GMROI, conversion, and customer relevance.
• Own lifecycle margin management across the full product journey — from initial markup strategies through markdown cadence and liquidation planning — for both third-party and private label programs.

AI, Planning Tools & Automation

• Integrate and champion AI tools within the planning and buying workflow — demand-forecasting models, assortment simulations, attribute-level analytics, and LLM-powered trend research.
• Evaluate, implement, and optimize planning platforms and technologies that increase speed, accuracy, and scalability across both functions.
• Build lean, automated processes to improve replenishment triggers, size/color optimization, and receipt-flow management.
• Use ML-driven insights to reduce bias in assortment and buying decisions, surface emerging opportunities, and accelerate test-and-learn cycles.

Cross-Functional & Team Leadership

• Work closely with other leaders to align assortment architecture with seasonal themes, customer preferences, and style-level penetration goals.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives where planning rigor, buying expertise, and data-backed decision making drive business outcomes.
• Lead, coach, and develop the buying team to operate with autonomy, analytical precision, and clear ownership — building the connective tissue between planning strategy and market-level buying decisions.
• Use AI and advanced planning tools to uplevel team capability across forecast accuracy, hindsight discipline, market sensing, and vendor negotiation.
• Create a culture of continuous improvement, intellectual curiosity, and measurable impact.

What You Bring

• 8–10+ years of merchandising, planning, and/or buying experience in apparel, including direct leadership of buying teams.
• Deep apparel expertise with a strong understanding of fit, fabrication, seasonality, and category nuance across women's and/or men's apparel.
• End-to-end product lifecycle experience across both third-party brand buying and private label development — from concept through exit.
• Strong mathematical and analytical foundation, including comfort with statistical modeling, demand forecasting, and financial planning frameworks.
• Demonstrated proficiency with AI-driven tools and modern planning platforms — you evaluate, adopt, and integrate new technologies, not just use what you're handed.
• Proven ability to build cohesive, commercially strong assortments that tell a clear story by theme and season.
• Advanced Excel / Google Sheets skills; experience with enterprise planning systems a plus.
• Ability to make independent, data-informed decisions with speed and conviction — not layers of approval.
• Strong communication skills — able to translate quantitative insights and tradeoffs clearly for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Creativity balanced with disciplined, quantitative thinking.
• Bachelor's degree in Merchandising, Business, Mathematics, or related field preferred but not required.
• Ability to travel as needed.

Compensation & Logistics

• Base salary: $185,000 – $220,000 depending on experience
• Bonus eligible
• Full benefits package
• Based in Los Angeles, CA — hybrid schedule

How We Work at Wantable

• High ownership. You are trusted to make decisions that directly impact customers and financial performance.
• Hard-working and hands-on. We move fast, stay scrappy, and focus on impact.
• Independent thinkers. We value leaders who confidently make data-driven decisions without layers of approvals.
• Low bureaucracy. We avoid committees, long processes, and unnecessary steps.
• Love of fashion & product. We combine data with intuition to create experiences customers love.
• Results over pedigree. What you’ve built matters more than where you’ve been.

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.