Head of Planning & Supply Chain
1 day ago
Manchester
For fifty years, the biggest sportswear brands on earth have been selling you plastic. They did it because plastic is cheap, and they spent billions on marketing to make sure you never asked what you were wearing. \n \n Nero exists to end that. We make premium men's activewear from natural fibres only. Ten years from now there will be a generational brand that took this fight to the incumbents and won. It's going to be built by a small team of people who were in the room early, and who were hungry enough to outwork companies a thousand times their size. We are hiring for that room. \n \n The Role \n \n You own the plan. What we buy, how much, in what sizes and colours, for which market, arriving when, at what landed cost. You own the suppliers who make it and the warehouses that hold it. You build the forecast, you defend it, and you're accountable for what happens when it's wrong. \n \n The founder makes the product decisions, what we launch, what we kill, what the brand is. For the first year he signs every PO. Your job is to make that signature a formality: the plan in front of him is right, the numbers behind it are right, and he can see why. \n \n What you'll own \n \n Demand planning and the buy \n\n • The forecast: by product, colour, size, market, month. Built from sell-through, not last year's budget, because there isn't one\n, • Hero product in-stock, all year, in both warehouses. This is the number the company lives on\n, • Size curves and colour splits by market. UK and US customers don't buy the same way and our stock shouldn't pretend they do\n, • The buy plan for every launch and every reorder: quantities, timing, and the cash it ties up, presented to the founder on one page with your recommendation\n, • Reserve stock policy: influencer seeding, VIP gifting, returns and exchange buffer, protected on every PO\n, • Weeks of cover, inventory turns, markdown exposure, tracked, reported, and turned into the next buy\n\n \n Supply chain \n\n • Supplier relationships and production timelines across Portugal, Italy and China. Greige availability, fabric lead times, ex-works dates, you know them before they move\n, • Landed cost per SKU. Duty, HS classification, air vs sea, tariff refunds. You own the strategy; you work with a customs specialist on the mechanics\n, • 3PL relationships in the UK and US: performance, cost, accuracy, contracts. If a warehouse is failing us, you know, and you've already got the plan\n, • Inventory allocation between warehouses and the rules that govern it\n\n \n Planning as a function \n\n • The launch and stock calendar, owned end to end with Product: brief → sample → bulk → ex-works → freight → customs → live\n, • A monthly planning review with the founder, sales, stock, cash, what's changing and why\n, • Inventory planning that ties to the financial forecast, so the CFO-shaped question "how much cash is in stock and when does it come back" always has an answer\n, • The tools, the reports and the SOPs. We run on Shopify, Google Sheets and Claude, and we'd rather you built something simple that works than bought something big that doesn't\n, • The people. The Operations Coordinator reports to you now. The planning and ops hires that follow will too\n\n \n What good looks like after 90 days \n\n • You've rebuilt the forecast and the founder trusts it more than his own\n, • You've told us something about our sell-through that changed a buy\n, • You have a actionable plan from transitioning our air freight movements to sea freight\n, • You've found money in landed cost, or found a stock-out before it happened\n, • The founder hasn't had to think about a PO date\n\n \n What good looks like after a year \n\n • Hero product in-stock rate is where it should be and has stayed there through two peak seasons\n, • Nero is three times bigger and the planning function scaled with it without adding a layer of management\n\n \n Who is this for \n\n • You've run planning or supply chain for a DTC apparel or consumer brand.\n, • You've owned a forecast with real money behind it and been wrong, and you can tell us what you learned\n, • You've managed factories, freight and 3PLs across borders. USA market experience is a must.\n, • You're numerate to the bone. Spreadsheets are where you think, and you use AI like a power tool, Claude builds your models and drafts your reports while you make the calls\n, • You've led people, but you don't need a team to do the work. This is a builder's seat, not a manager's\n, • You want to be in a room with the people building the company, not on a Slack channel with them\n, • You have something to prove\n\n \n Benefits \n\n • Base salary: £50k-£80k\n, • Performance bonus\n, • Hybrid with Northern Quarter Office (Manchester)\n\n \n Apply here: https://forms.gle/gZrima6t8yG8DSr7A