Inventory & Demand Planning Manager | AI-Native | Multi-Brand Ecommerce

Inventory & Demand Planning Manager | AI-Native | Multi-Brand Ecommerce

TYPE OF WORK: Full Time — Remote

WAGE / SALARY: $2,000–$3,000 USD/month, depending on experience and demonstrated results

HOURS PER WEEK: 40

SKILL REQUIREMENTS: Inventory Management | Forecasting | Supply Chain Management

JOB OVERVIEW

Our Best Sellers Should Never Be Out of Stock. Your Job Is to Make Sure of It.

Here's something we've learned from running multiple ecommerce businesses:

When our best-selling products stay in stock, our businesses perform better. Significantly better.

It sounds obvious.

And yet, across ecommerce, businesses lose enormous amounts of revenue because someone didn't forecast demand properly, didn't place an order early enough, didn't anticipate a marketing campaign, or didn't follow up with a supplier.

We're determined to eliminate that problem.

We're looking for an exceptional Inventory & Demand Planning Manager to take ownership of inventory planning, forecasting, replenishment, and supplier coordination across our growing portfolio of ecommerce brands.

This is one of the most financially important operational roles in our company.

We don't need someone who simply monitors stock levels and tells us when something is running low.

We need someone who makes sure our best sellers never run low in the first place.

Someone who sees problems months before they happen.

Someone who can recognize tomorrow's best sellers before everyone else does.

Someone who can use data, AI, commercial judgment, and proactive supplier coordination to ensure the right inventory is always available at the right time.

Most importantly, someone who takes complete ownership of the outcome.

WHO WE ARE

oCommerce is a growing portfolio of consumer ecommerce companies operating across multiple industries.

Our brands include:

• Agent84 — Fashion-forward athleisure and women's lifestyle apparel.
• Skivys — Women's comfort clothing and loungewear.
• Blossomdale — Plants, gardening, and lifestyle products.
• Shrimpy Business — A leading online retailer of freshwater aquarium shrimp, fish, plants, and supplies.

We also operate and develop additional brands across other consumer categories.

Our businesses sell thousands of product variations, across different categories, suppliers, manufacturing timelines, and customer purchasing patterns.

Some products have fashion-driven demand.

Others are purchased repeatedly throughout the year.

Some are seasonal. Others become unexpectedly popular because of advertising or social media.

Each business presents a different inventory planning challenge.

Your mission is to build an inventory operation that stays ahead of all of them.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

1. Know Every Product — Especially the Winners

Across every brand, you'll continuously analyze our products and classify them into three groups:

Category A: All-Time Best Sellers

These are proven products that consistently generate meaningful sales.

Your highest priority is protecting their availability.

You should know their sales velocity, historical demand, supplier lead times, inventory coverage, and exactly when the next order must be placed.

A preventable stockout of a major best seller should never be a surprise.

Category B: Rising Best Sellers

These are products whose sales are accelerating and which show the potential to become our next major revenue drivers.

Your job is to identify them early.

Then gradually increase their representation in replenishment orders as demand becomes more established.

This is important: we don't want to wait until a rising product becomes a proven all-time bestseller before increasing our purchasing commitment.

Category C: Slow-Moving and Underperforming Products

These are products that consume cash and warehouse space without generating sufficient sales.

You'll identify them, monitor their performance, reduce unnecessary replenishment, and recommend ways to improve inventory efficiency.

These categories are not permanent.

A rising bestseller can become a core bestseller.

A former bestseller can decline.

A slow mover can suddenly accelerate.

You'll maintain an accurate, continuously updated classification of our entire product portfolio.

Not once every six months.

Continuously.

2. Own Inventory Forecasting and Replenishment

We have already invested in developing automated inventory forecasting and replenishment workflows.

You'll inherit these systems, take ownership of them, validate their accuracy, and make them better.

You'll use historical sales, actual selling velocity, current stock, inbound purchase orders, supplier lead times, safety stock, and anticipated demand to determine:

• What needs to be reordered.
• How much needs to be ordered.
• When orders need to be placed.
• When inventory is expected to arrive.
• Which products are at risk of stocking out.
• Where we may be overstocked.
• How purchasing should be prioritized within available budgets.

You'll forecast at the appropriate SKU and variant level, including style, color, size, and length where relevant.

You must understand the difference between a product selling slowly and a product appearing to sell slowly because it was unavailable for half the month.

A stockout should not trick your forecasting model into believing demand has disappeared.

You'll account for seasonality, new launches, changing business performance, promotional periods, and actual sales opportunities.

We expect you to understand forecasting deeply enough to challenge a model when its recommendations don't make commercial sense.

3. Work Directly With Our Advertising and Retention Marketing Teams

This is one of the most important parts of the job.

Historical sales data only tells you part of the story.

You need to understand what our marketing teams are planning to sell tomorrow.

You'll work proactively with our:

• Paid Advertising Team
• Retention Marketing Team (Email and SMS)
• Brand Managers
• Product and Operations Teams

You'll understand upcoming product launches, promotional calendars, advertising budget increases, featured products, email campaigns, and expected demand spikes.

Imagine our advertising team plans to aggressively scale spending on a particular product next month.

You notice that our existing stock will only cover three weeks of normal demand.

A typical inventory coordinator might notice the problem once inventory starts running low.

An exceptional inventory manager identifies the conflict immediately, calculates the risk, speaks with the advertising team, and coordinates with suppliers to find a solution before the campaign launches.

That's the standard we're looking for.

We don't want inventory planning operating independently from marketing.

We want marketing and inventory working together to maximize revenue.

4. Own Supplier and Factory Coordination

Forecasting means nothing if the products don't arrive.

You will communicate directly with our factories, manufacturers, suppliers, and other relevant partners.

Your responsibilities include:

• Preparing and coordinating replenishment purchase orders.
• Understanding production timelines, minimum order quantities, and supplier capacity.
• Confirming manufacturing and delivery schedules.
• Following up proactively on production progress.
• Coordinating with logistics and warehouse teams.
• Tracking incoming shipments and expected arrival dates.
• Identifying delays early and implementing recovery plans.
• Maintaining accurate purchase order and inbound inventory records.
• Negotiating improved lead times, terms, and purchasing arrangements where possible.

You must understand the full journey of a product, from purchase order to available inventory.

An order being placed does not mean your job is finished.

Your responsibility continues until the inventory is actually available for customers to purchase.

If a factory misses a deadline, we should hear about the proposed solution from you—not discover the problem when the product goes out of stock.

5. Become an AI-Native Inventory Manager

AI is central to how we want this department to operate.

We're not looking for someone who occasionally asks ChatGPT to help with a spreadsheet formula.

We're looking for someone who understands how AI can fundamentally improve demand forecasting, inventory monitoring, supplier coordination, and operational decision-making.

You'll be expected to use AI and automation to:

• Analyze large volumes of SKU-level sales data.
• Identify emerging best sellers and declining products.
• Maintain and improve automated demand forecasts.
• Detect unusual changes in sales velocity.
• Flag potential stockouts before they become urgent.
• Incorporate marketing plans into inventory projections.
• Generate replenishment recommendations.
• Monitor supplier delays and outstanding purchase orders.
• Build dashboards and exception-based alerts.
• Automate repetitive reporting and follow-up processes.

We're especially interested in people who have experience with ChatGPT, Claude, AI automation platforms, scripting, or advanced spreadsheet workflows.

We want you to build a system that watches our inventory continuously—not one that depends on someone remembering to open a spreadsheet.

But we're equally clear about something else:

AI doesn't replace judgment.

You are accountable for validating the data, understanding the assumptions, checking the recommendations, and making sound decisions.

An AI-generated forecast is not a substitute for knowing your business.

6. Protect Revenue Without Wasting Cash

Keeping products in stock is only half the equation.

The other half is avoiding unnecessary inventory.

Every dollar tied up in slow-moving stock is a dollar we cannot invest elsewhere.

You'll need to understand the relationship between inventory availabilit