Associate – Merchandise Planner – Chalhoub Group

Chalhoub Group is hiring an Associate Merchandise Planner to support inventory and assortment planning across its luxury retail portfolio, which spans fashion, beauty, jewellery, watches, eyewear, and art de vivre categories. Merchandise planning sits at the analytical core of retail, deciding what products to stock, in what quantities, and when, based on sales trends, seasonality, and brand-specific performance patterns.

Expect the role to involve analyzing sales and inventory data, supporting buying decisions with data-backed recommendations, and working closely with buying, retail operations, and brand partner teams to keep stock levels aligned with actual demand. In luxury retail specifically, getting this balance wrong carries real cost, overstocking ties up capital in slow-moving premium inventory, while understocking means losing sales on products customers actively want.

Chalhoub Group’s decades-long partnership model with luxury brands across fashion, beauty, and jewellery gives this role access to a genuinely broad and sophisticated retail operation to learn from. A strong candidate is comfortable working with data and spreadsheets daily while also understanding the qualitative, brand-sensitive nature of luxury retail decision-making.

Merchandise planning decisions directly determine how much capital is tied up in inventory and how well that inventory matches actual customer demand, which makes this role a direct lever on both profitability and customer satisfaction across Chalhoub's luxury retail brands. In luxury retail specifically, the cost of getting this wrong is amplified, overstocked premium inventory ties up significant capital and often requires costly markdowns that damage brand positioning, while stockouts on in-demand luxury items mean losing high-margin sales and frustrating customers who may not wait around for restocking. An Associate Merchandise Planner who builds accurate, data-driven stocking recommendations helps the broader buying and retail teams make better decisions faster, improving sell-through rates and reducing the working capital locked up in slow-moving stock. Because Chalhoub operates across such a wide range of categories, fashion, beauty, jewellery, watches, eyewear, errors or inefficiencies in planning compound across many brand relationships simultaneously, while strong planning discipline protects margin and brand reputation across the entire portfolio. This is detail-oriented analytical work, but its cumulative effect on the group's retail profitability is genuinely significant.

Merchandise planning is one of the clearer analytical career tracks within retail, and starting as an Associate within a group as large and diversified as Chalhoub provides exposure to planning across multiple luxury categories simultaneously, a breadth that most single-brand retailers could never offer a planner this early in their career. That exposure builds genuinely transferable analytical and retail judgment skills quickly, which positions strong performers for progression into senior planner, category planning manager, or broader retail strategy roles within the group over time. Because Chalhoub partners with a large roster of luxury brands, planners here also build an understanding of how different brand positioning and customer expectations shape planning decisions, a nuanced skill that is highly valued as retail planners move into more senior, brand-facing roles. The data and analytical skills built in merchandise planning are also strongly transferable beyond retail specifically, into supply chain, category management, or commercial analytics roles across other industries. Luxury retail in the UAE continues to grow as both tourism and local consumer spending in premium categories increase, giving this career path durable relevance in the regional market. For someone analytically minded who also enjoys the commercial and brand-sensitive side of retail, merchandise planning offers a strong, well-structured entry point into a long-term retail career.

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Retail Management, Supply Chain, or a related field
• Strong analytical skills with proficiency in Excel and inventory or merchandise planning systems
• Interest in or prior exposure to luxury retail, fashion, beauty, or related categories
• Ability to translate sales data into clear, actionable stocking and assortment recommendations
• Strong attention to detail when managing inventory across multiple brands and categories
• Good communication skills for working with buying, operations, and brand partner teams
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving retail environment with shifting seasonal priorities