Merchandise Planning Transformation Product Manager

<p>Our Product Managers help shape REI’s product vision and deliver experiences that are inspiring, inclusive, human, purposeful, and trustworthy. This role contributes to REI’s success as a <strong>strategic and execution‑focused Product Manager</strong> for the merchandise planning, supporting our enterprise, multi‑year <strong>Merchandise Planning Transformation (MPT)</strong> program. This role will focus on the assortment planning area, while also ensuring alignment and integration with adjacent merchandise planning functions, including demand planning, allocation and replenishment, merchandise financial planning, supply planning, and space planning.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>MPT is a critical, cross‑divisional initiative driving significant people,<strong> business process and technology transformatio</strong>n across REI’s merchandising organization. It is a foundational enabler for both the Co‑op’s day‑to‑day operations and its long‑term strategic priorities.</p><p><br></p><p>In this role, you’ll partner closely with cross‑functional teams to bridge business needs and technology capabilities, ensuring the new assortment planning capability delivers meaningful value to the organization. You’ll play a key role in launching, scaling, and continuously improving this capability across Merchandising.</p><p><br></p><p>You’ll join a fast‑paced, collaborative, and mission‑driven product community where you’re empowered to discover problems worth solving and deliver impactful solutions for Merchandising business users—advancing the mission of the Co‑op.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Product Ownership & Strategy</strong></p><p>• Own the assortment planning capability and product vision, clearly articulating the roadmap to team members and collaborators.</p><p>• Translate product vision into clear, prioritized roadmap requirements, building alignment and buy‑in with business and technical partners.</p><p>• Contribute to strategic and quarterly planning by defining priorities, outcomes, and success metrics; conduct retrospectives to inform future decisions.</p><p>• Define and track KPIs to measure product performance, adoption, and post‑launch success.</p><p><strong>Discovery, Requirements & Delivery</strong></p><p>• Lead product discovery using tools such as user interviews, workshops, surveys, data analysis, and journey mapping.</p><p>• Develop and maintain a strong working knowledge of current and future merchandising processes, including gaps, pain points, systems, data flows, and integrations.</p><p>• Create clear and detailed product requirements, backlog items, epics, user stories, and RFP documentation to enable meaningful feasibility and solution discussions.</p><p>• Partner with designers, architects, and engineers to translate user needs into thoughtful product designs and technical solutions.</p><p>• Proactively identify dependencies, remove delivery blockers, and support the product team to ensure smooth execution.</p><p>• Participate in backlog grooming and prioritization sessions, ensuring alignment and sign‑off from business and development partners.</p><p><strong>Launch, Adoption & Optimization</strong></p><p>• Support testing activities, including test case development, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and end‑user validation.</p><p>• Partner with Change Management to assess impacts, support enablement, and prepare the organization for change.</p><p>• Develop end‑user documentation and contribute to training and rollout plans for new capabilities or enhancements.</p><p>• Gather feedback from users and stakeholders to inform continuous product improvements and iterations.</p><p>• Provide exceptional post‑launch support by triaging issues, resolving defects, and communicating clearly with business users.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Collaboration & Product Practice Leadership</strong></p><p>• Work effectively across multiple product teams and collaborators to drive alignment and shared outcomes.</p><p>• Partner closely with Technology to design, configure, test, document, and troubleshoot solutions.</p><p>• Identify and escalate delivery or implementation risks as needed.</p><p>• Advocate for business users while enabling industry‑leading best practices across merchandising disciplines.</p><p>• Actively contribute to the ongoing evolution of Product Management practices at the Co‑op.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Required Qualifications</strong></p><p>• 5+ years’ general Merchandising product experience, including 2+ years’ experience as a Product Manager or equivalent combination of education and experience.</p><p>• Specific experience with Assortment Planning either as a planner or Product Manager.</p><p>• Experience working collaboratively with engineers, data analysts, solution & domain architects.</p><p>• Experience designing and executing product discovery and product optimization for internal tools and users.</p><p>• Technical fluency; comfort understanding and discussing technology concepts, schedule trade-offs and new opportunities with technical team members.</p><p>• Familiarity with fundamental concepts of Systems Thinking.</p><p>• Knowledge of data value streams, and ability to identify data quality concerns.</p><p>• Experience in building and operationalizing holistic solutions that meet the needs for multiple lines of businesses.</p><p>• Proven track record of delivering impactful products / services to a broad customer base in an agile environment.</p><p>• Proven ability to leverage data and insights to make informed product recommendations.</p><p>• Proven analytical, business process, communication and business acumen skills.</p><p>• Demonstrated experience with facilitating business user sessions.</p><p>• Demonstrated ability to self-educate and learn while doing.</p><p>• Acts upon opportunities and involves and influences others in the accomplishment of worthwhile organizational goals.</p><p>• Challenges the status quo, champions change and influences others to change.</p><p>• Project management skills including ability to create individual action plans and timelines, and complete action items in a timely manner.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Preferred Qualifications</strong></p><p>• Experience with o9 software and/or o9 implementation.</p><p>• Experience with large technology enabled transformation implementations.</p><p></p>

Back to blog

Common Interview Questions And Answers

1. HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR DAY?

This is what this question poses: When do you focus and start working seriously? What are the hours you work optimally? Are you a night owl? A morning bird? Remote teams can be made up of people working on different shifts and around the world, so you won't necessarily be stuck in the 9-5 schedule if it's not for you...

2. HOW DO YOU USE THE DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

When you're working on a remote team, there's no way to chat in the hallway between meetings or catch up on the latest project during an office carpool. Therefore, virtual communication will be absolutely essential to get your work done...

3. WHAT IS "WORKING REMOTE" REALLY FOR YOU?

Many people want to work remotely because of the flexibility it allows. You can work anywhere and at any time of the day...

4. WHAT DO YOU NEED IN YOUR PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO SUCCEED IN YOUR WORK?

With this question, companies are looking to see what equipment they may need to provide you with and to verify how aware you are of what remote working could mean for you physically and logistically...

5. HOW DO YOU PROCESS INFORMATION?

Several years ago, I was working in a team to plan a big event. My supervisor made us all work as a team before the big day. One of our activities has been to find out how each of us processes information...

6. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE CALENDAR AND THE PROGRAM? WHICH APPLICATIONS / SYSTEM DO YOU USE?

Or you may receive even more specific questions, such as: What's on your calendar? Do you plan blocks of time to do certain types of work? Do you have an open calendar that everyone can see?...

7. HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE FILES, LINKS, AND TABS ON YOUR COMPUTER?

Just like your schedule, how you track files and other information is very important. After all, everything is digital!...

8. HOW TO PRIORITIZE WORK?

The day I watched Marie Forleo's film separating the important from the urgent, my life changed. Not all remote jobs start fast, but most of them are...

9. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A MEETING AND PREPARE A MEETING? WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING DURING THE MEETING?

Just as communication is essential when working remotely, so is organization. Because you won't have those opportunities in the elevator or a casual conversation in the lunchroom, you should take advantage of the little time you have in a video or phone conference...

10. HOW DO YOU USE TECHNOLOGY ON A DAILY BASIS, IN YOUR WORK AND FOR YOUR PLEASURE?

This is a great question because it shows your comfort level with technology, which is very important for a remote worker because you will be working with technology over time...