Vice President, Consumer Portfolio Planning — Seasonal Inventory and Cash

The mandate

Seasonal consumer collections require purchase decisions well before reliable demand becomes visible. A portfolio business is repeatedly entering the next selling season with cash tied up in prior collections and commitments based on a single optimistic forecast. The VP will own finance planning across those decisions, making the cost of being wrong visible before orders become inflexible. The task is to connect demand uncertainty, residual inventory and funded purchasing capacity, not to replace merchandising judgement with a mechanical forecast ranking.

The appointment provides an open-ended employment term. Its first eighteen-month work programme will establish a seasonal commitment record, demand-range planning and a finance review that operates before major order decisions. Twenty specialists support the function, working with merchandising and supply planners. Delhi NCR is the base, with scheduled market and sourcing-interface reviews. Finance owns the economic recommendation; product design and supplier production execution remain with their designated leaders.

The VP sets forecast challenge standards, governs financial commitment visibility and may reallocate approved planning resources. Purchasing quantities, customer promises and material markdown decisions require the appropriate commercial authorisation. Treasury retains facility execution and controllers retain stock valuation decisions. Finance must nevertheless show how cancellation rights, delivery timing and channel returns affect usable cash, rather than assuming a planned sale becomes a receipt in time to support the following collection's purchase obligations.

The permanent remit includes portfolio budgeting, long-range planning and management interpretation of seasonal performance. It excludes fashion design, supplier quality certification and ownership of statutory books. A good decision process should preserve alternative demand paths and the point at which commitments can still be changed. After each season, the team must distinguish inaccurate demand assumptions from late delivery or channel timing, retaining the learning without presenting aged stock as successful growth simply because it has not yet been written down or sold at a discount.

What you will own

• Establish a seasonal commitment ladder showing placed orders, remaining flexibility, expected deliveries and payment dates, joining them to prior-season inventory so leaders can see the cash already committed before endorsing the next collection.
• Govern demand planning through ranges and channel-specific evidence, distinguishing a justified growth assumption from sales expectations that require purchasing commitments before the customer behaviour supporting them has been observed.
• Recommend inventory funding priorities using downside sell-through and return scenarios, making the consequence of protecting one collection's availability clear when it reduces resources available for another portfolio opportunity.
• Challenge the financial value of order flexibility and staged purchasing, comparing higher unit cost with the exposure avoided when uncertain demand would otherwise leave the business holding inflexible stock beyond its intended selling window.
• Lead seasonal performance reviews that connect receipts, sell-through and cash, separating forecast error from delivery disruption or channel timing so future planning standards respond to the actual cause of disappointing outcomes.
• Present residual-stock scenarios with controllers and commercial leaders, explaining the operating and cash consequences of retention, transfer or markdown while leaving valuation and customer-price approvals with their authorised owners.
• Develop portfolio planners who can reconcile commercial and financial views, preserve assumption history and make a conditional recommendation confidently when a single precise forecast would conceal more uncertainty than it resolves.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate substantial senior FP&A, business-finance or function-head responsibility in consumer products, retail or a comparable inventory-led portfolio. Show a consequential seasonal or collection decision you changed before commitments became fixed. Your evidence must identify the demand assumptions, order flexibility and cash consequences examined, not simply ownership of a budget whose disappointing result was explained after the selling period ended.
• Bring rigorous forecasting and management-accounting competence supported by relevant professional finance education or equivalent senior practice. Explain how delivery timing, channel returns and existing stock affected a purchase or funding recommendation. You must reconcile planning measures to reliable inventory and financial records, distinguishing commercial expectation from a booked asset or cash resource that management can actually use.
• Have worked constructively with merchandising, sales and supply-planning executives whose priorities conflicted. Describe a situation where paying for flexibility or accepting a smaller initial order was financially preferable despite a less attractive unit price. The role requires understanding operating constraints without assuming product, supplier-quality or treasury execution authority that remains with qualified and accountable owners.
• Have led finance specialists through uncertain planning decisions and retained useful learning across seasons. Evidence should show controlled assumptions, clear executive alternatives and a review that distinguished demand error from other operating causes. The appointment requires direct engagement with commercial teams, confidentiality around future collections and the willingness to challenge optimistic commitments while respecting the strategic value of availability or assortment where credible evidence supports it.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 14 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-239.