Shannon Harris

Luggage, Travel, and Licensed Team Sports

Men’s Outdoor, Activewear, and Swim

Outdoor Furniture, Decor, Pillows, Beach, and Hydration

* Serve as a liaison between the Field Operators and the Store Support Center’s cross-functional stakeholders. * Oversee merchandise execution, marketing, product selection, and market trend analysis for 205 stores in 10 states. * Improve sales, margin, and turn results through rigorous analysis of specific businesses in specified markets/regions for a multi–layer Customer Business Unit. * Analyze product assortment to meet the unique needs of the community by consistently reviewing and reacting to competitive advantages, demographic and economic trends within the market place. * Collaborate with merchant groups (Merchandise Presentation, Field Operations, Merchants, Marketing, etc.) to establish and implement long-term product assortments, product flow, and advertising strategies. * Build and maintain seasonal calendars to ensure regional relevancy of visual sets, product flow, pricing and advertising. * Examine historical, seasonal, and current trends by regions and product categories to identify new opportunities. * Develop best practices and end to end processes for consistent day to day operation. * Compose regionally relevant strategy briefs that translate seasonal strategies into actionable directives for all levels of operation. * Extensively examine and provide guidance of the competitive landscape in new and existing markets

* Advise Buyers in the creation of an optimized assortment plan; ensure that the correct mix and range of retail products are available to consumers in both retail and direct channels that will maximize profit and customer experience. * Develop and implement quarterly assortment plans as well as report strategic intent and financial outcome expectations to all levels of management. * Perform extensive analysis of historical data and current trends to identify sales opportunities and risks, as well as extensive analysis of both pre-season and in-season figures to optimize line profitability. * Administrate all aspects of the end-to-end process within assigned merchandise organization, including overseeing others in interpreting and applying ROI results in making merchandise assortment decisions. * Provide coaching, mentoring, and support to fellow associates regarding the use of the EFAS and Assortment Planning Tool. * Identify key drivers of performance through in-season and ad hoc analysis.

* Managed store inventory for 1100 stores including more than 25,000 Color/Line/Sku combinations based on seasonality, selling curves, and each store's capacity; ensured that stock levels and quantities of merchandise purchased matched current sales trends. * Assisted Planners and Merchants in setting purchase priorities by analyzing sales and inventory productivity. * Oversaw purchase orders at all phases of the merchandise life cycle, including the replenishment, consolidation, and transfer of goods to stores. * Worked within established budgets to allocate the inventory necessary to support sales targets and meet inventory turn objectives for specific categories of goods. * Consistently identified and acted on new sales trends, opportunities, and challenges by analyzing sales reports down to the store level. * Maintained relationships with vendors, store, and district managers to ensure availability of inventory necessary to meet sales goals; identified slow-moving styles and formulated strategies to liquidate underperforming inventory.

* Assisted Buying team in the management of gross margin through sales, markdowns, returns to vendors, and markups; developed assortments designed to offer good, better, and best product differentiation. * Implemented item pricing and marketing strategies, and worked extensively with the Marketing and Visual team to develop plan-o-gram concepts and select key items for marketing materials. * Developed and maintained close relationships with external and internal partners to identify key segments of the customer base for the purpose of developing products to meet consumer needs. * Provided multi-channel sales projections and forecasts of merchandise assortments; created and managed reports relating to sales results.

* Oversaw the allocation of merchandise to 1100 store locations throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. * Maintained proper sales to stock ratios in stores to ensure minimal back stock. * Worked closely with merchants and planners to ensure proper merchandise assortments in each store based on climate and sales history. * Continuously reviewed sales figures to ensure purchase quantities and stock levels met current sales trends. * Made recommendations regarding changes and enhancements to the procedures and systems used in the allocation and replenishment of inventory to better assist the merchandise department.