■Recruitment Background
GU, one of the major brands within the Fast Retailing Group, aims to become a true global brand. Guided by its brand message, "YOUR FREEDOM: The freedom to reinvent yourself," GU creates hit products that capture master trends, prevents stockouts of best-selling items, and delivers products and services that exceed customer expectations.
To become a truly global brand, GU still faces many challenges.We seek a Product Planning Leader to join us in advancing GU's unique global challenge: maximizing fashion enjoyment with minimal SKUs and prices. This requires transformation across all aspects of apparel business—building a stronger management team through diverse talent recruitment and development, enhancing product and styling quality, creating shopper-friendly stores, improving quantity/sales planning accuracy, and establishing agile additional production systems.

■Department Overview
・"Product Planning" involves crafting the core business strategy: determining which products to make, when, in what quantities, and how to tell the story that allows customers to enjoy GU products. The mission of the Product Planning Department is to "simultaneously and healthily enhance customer and store satisfaction, along with company profitability."From setting product budgets to selling out inventory, we analyze past performance and future outlooks using both quantitative and qualitative methods, then formulate and execute countermeasures. As a leader in fashion trends, GU's product planning demands constant trend forecasting, rapid PDCA cycles, and dynamic decision-making.
・The Product Planning Department has three roles: Japan Business, Overseas Business, and E-Commerce Business.

■Job Description
・As a category manager for GU products (Women's, Men's, Kids, etc.), you will be responsible for the entire business planning process: setting sales budgets for your assigned products, creating sales plans (seasonal/monthly/weekly), and developing the production plans to achieve them. You will also manage the execution to ensure plans are followed. The scope of your influence will be business operations ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of yen.

Specific duties include:
(1) Strategy and Tactics Development: Analyze market conditions and formulate strategies/tactics to achieve sales and profit targets. Establish product management KPIs (SKU count, pricing) for executing these strategies and tactics.
(2) Product Budget Formulation: Create monthly/seasonal/departmental portfolios detailing sales, gross profit, cost ratio, and discount rate.
(3) Product Plan Review: Review product plans developed by MDs (Merchandisers) using quantitative/logical approaches based on actual sales performance to improve plan accuracy.
(4) Demand Forecasting/Sales Planning: Develop and validate product-specific demand forecasts against the product plans from (3), proposing revisions to the MD. Based on validated forecasts, collaborate with relevant departments (Corporate Planning/MD/Marketing/IMD/Inventory Control/Sales) to formulate countermeasures for identified issues and establish sales plans.
(5) Based on the sales plan, share sales tactics with stores. Progress management and plan revisions are conducted based on actual results to achieve business targets (sales/gross profit/gross profit margin/end-of-period inventory).

As GU handles fashion apparel, products change seasonally. With production and sales volumes ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of units per product, balancing speed and controlling large-scale business operations is essential. By achieving both highly complex planning/forecasting and precise numerical control, we dynamically drive business forward, creating significant results and customer satisfaction.
・The Job Description may change within the scope of tasks related to each headquarters department due to department transfers or organizational changes.

■Career Path
・Upon joining, you will be assigned to the merchandise planning team for the Japan business, where you will gain an understanding of GU's overall business operations. Additionally, to provide foundational experience in store management, you will be assigned to a store for approximately six months at an appropriate time after joining. (Details will be provided during the interview.) After this period, depending on your aspirations and aptitude, you may have the opportunity to take on challenges in overseas operations or the e-commerce business.
・As a Merchandise Planner, you will engage in a wide range of tasks spanning the entire value chain at GU, cultivating the fundamentals of merchandise management—Fast Retailing's core competency. This includes creating plans based on fundamental principles, adjusting plans in response to immediate business needs, and devising and executing sales strategies.
・Beyond honing your expertise within the Merchandise Planning department (Japan, Overseas, or E-commerce divisions), you'll have diverse career opportunities across the Fast Retailing Group, including roles in MD, SCM, Marketing, VMD, Corporate Planning, Overseas Operations, Group Business, and as an Overseas Local COO.

■Required Experience, Skills, and Abilities
・Experience in fact-based, quantitative analysis to identify issues, logically evaluate countermeasures, and execute them within operating companies, trading firms, consulting firms, etc.
・Experience demonstrating leadership to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders and drive projects forward effectively
・High interest in clothing production or strong interest in GU's business model and culture

■Preferred Experience, Skills, and Abilities
・Experience or skills in business planning, marketing (brand management), merchandising (MD), or management accounting
・Business English proficiency (emails, document creation/reading, internal/external meetings, external transactions, etc.)

■Company Name
GU Co., Ltd.

■Employment Type
Full-time Employee (Indefinite term, with a 3-month probationary period)

■Annual Salary
・Annual Salary Range: ¥5.28 million to ¥8.64 million (Monthly Salary: ¥330,000 to ¥540,000)
・Allowances: Commuting allowance, overtime allowance, etc. (※All based on company regulations)
・Bonuses: Semi-annual bonuses twice a year, year-end bonus (Payment and amount determined based on company performance and personnel evaluation)
・Promotions twice a year (determined based on performance evaluation)
*Salary will be determined based on company policy, taking into account your previous annual income and experience, in addition to the above.

■Working Hours
Flextime system or managerial/supervisory role
・Flextime system
Standard daily working hours: 8 hours, Break: 1 hour
Core hours: 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Flexible time: 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM and 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM (Overtime work may occur)
・Supervisory employees
Based on the working hours of the assigned department, determined by the employee

■Holidays & Leave
Two days off per week (Saturdays and Sundays; national holidays are workdays) Annual paid leave, special/bereavement leave, childcare/nursing care leave systems, etc.
※Special leave granted in the first and second halves of the year, separate from paid leave (number of days varies by employment type and company)

■Insurance Coverage
Social Insurance (Health Insurance, Employees' Pension Insurance, Employment Insurance, Workers' Accident Compensation Insurance, Long-Term Care Insurance)

■Employee Benefits
Employee stock ownership program, mutual aid association, affiliated welfare programs, employee discount system, cafeteria, dedicated shuttle bus (for commuting to Ariake Office), defined contribution pension plan

■Other
・Our company actively recruits mid-career hires across group companies (Fast Retailing, UNIQLO, GU, etc.). We encourage you to review the following information before considering your application.
- Simultaneous applications to multiple companies within the Fast Retailing Group are possible. However, please note that even if you progress in the selection process for multiple companies, you can only advance to the final selection stage for one position at a time.
- Based on your submitted resume and interview evaluations, we may discuss opportunities with other companies or positions within the Fast Retailing Group.

・Smoking Prevention Measures: Smoking is prohibited on the premises and indoors. No designated smoking rooms are provided. (Smoking is prohibited during working hours, including breaks.)

Ariake Headquarters: UNIQLO CITY, 1-6-7 Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo
*Location may be changed to a location designated by the company, including overseas.