During my time at Walmart, I was the end-to-end owner of the multi-billion dollar Men’s Underwear, Undershirts, and Thermals business for both eCommerce and all US stores. As the category owner, I was responsible for buying and planning the assortment to track to KPI’s, positioning Walmart as a credible fashion destination, and merchandising both the site experience and store experience.
MERCH & PLANNING
In owning the Men’s Underwear P&L, I built assortment plans and channel distribution strategies to drive sales, turn, and margin while fulfilling customer demands and increasing market share. To ensure I was tracking to open to buy (OTB) metrics, I created financial ladder plans by brand and vendor with my planner and proactively actioned on pricing based on sales trends, market data, promotional events, and inventory liability.
Though Underwear is a replenishment-heavy business, I still used market data and trend acumen to forecast my buying decisions and manage receipts, both replen and non-replen. Additionally, since increasing profitability was a high priority, I bundled items online, delivered a good-better-best brand matrix, optimized omni-channel fulfillment, and negotiated competitive costing and margin support from vendors.
FASHION @ WALMART
One of the primary goals of the team was to make Walmart a credible fashion destination. To elevate the Underwear assortment, I brought on new brands such as Pair of Thieves, Reebok, and Champion, while also partnering with our existing national brands such as Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, Gildan, and Jockey to develop more fashion-forward products without alienating our core customer. I also advocated for my assortment to our marketing and editorial teams to tell visually compelling stories both on our website and via marketing campaigns (email, social media, influencers, affiliates).
SITE & STORE MERCHANDISING
Another aspect of my role was merchandising both the site and store experiences. To enhance the customer experience, I merchandised .com based on inventory, SEO, and conversion rates. By leveraging behavioral data to conduct A/B tests, I merchandised the site dynamically to revamp search filters and direct traffic for specific queries. I frequently partnered with the site merchandising team to include my products in relevant site experiences and even created experiences when necessary. For example, in an effort to emulate the store experience of buying fun, licensed products on a whim, my sleepwear and graphic tees counterparts and I pitched a Fandom Shop to house our licensed assortment.
On the store side, I contributed to the visual merchandising of stores primarily by measuring assortment productivity of each product and providing strategic direction from my good-better-best brand matrix. From there, my team and I created visual merchandise plans for each of the different store and aisle layouts and performed walkthroughs for the executive team on a quarterly basis.
