Retail Allocator - Allen Solly

Overview

The role of Retail Allocator at Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd. focuses on optimizing merchandise distribution to drive sales efficiency within apparel retail, specifically under the Allen Solly brand. This position involves creating strategic buying plans, monitoring inventory and sales, and ensuring timely product delivery to stores across various regions.

Job Context and Challenges

The apparel retail market is rapidly evolving due to rising disposable income and increasing fashion awareness among working-class customers. New and international brands continuously enter the market, creating dynamic challenges. The Retail Allocator must support buying teams by assisting with seasonal trend adaptation, ensuring merchandise is available according to supply chain and store requirements, and contributing to overall growth in a competitive, fast-changing environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Assist in developing merchandise assortment plans tailored for different store sizes and regions, formulating buying plans aligned with sales targets and setting average retail price (ARP) targets for product categories.
• Conduct option plans and perform in-depth analysis for buy decisions, including stock-to-sale analysis for opening and end-of-month periods and calculating open-to-buy (OTB).
• Contribute to monthly target setting by breaking down sales goals by product category and reporting on target versus achievement metrics.
• Monitor inventory management ensuring optimal stock coverage, managing dormancy and pullbacks within defined norms, and generating weekly sell-through reports to track sales performance.
• Formulate product category-wise dispatch and allocation plans, tracking planned versus actual dispatches and adjusting allocations based on size-wise analysis per store.
• Gather and analyze market intelligence including competitor launches, product displays, schemes, and maintain competition mapping to support merchandising and visual merchandising training.
• Track the contribution of core business categories and identify new designs for inclusion to improve category performance percentages on the like-to-like basis.
• Support creation of retail design briefs to inform seasonal option grids, incorporating learnings from past seasons.
• Plan and execute Integrated Go To Market (IGTM) strategies in collaboration with visual merchandising and design teams, including preparing key stores with thematic displays and rolling out across locations.
• Work closely with retail planners to integrate space planning insights, monitoring returns relative to allocated retail space to optimize product placement.