Top 12 Merchandising Coordinator Skills to Put on Your Resume
In today's competitive job market, standing out as a merchandising coordinator means showing a sharp mix of operational savvy and creative punch. The right skills on your resume signal that you can drive product strategy, shape visual stories in-store and online, and keep the engine humming behind the scenes. Below, twelve core skills that elevate your candidacy and help you hit the numbers without losing the brand narrative.
Merchandising Coordinator Skills
- Inventory Management
- Visual Merchandising
- Retail Analytics
- POS Systems
- Excel Proficiency
- Trend Forecasting
- SAP Retail
- Planogram Design
- Adobe Photoshop
- Market Research
- Negotiation
- Salesforce CRM
1. Inventory Management
Inventory management is the discipline of planning, ordering, storing, and moving stock so the right products exist in the right quantities at the right time. For a Merchandising Coordinator, that means balancing demand with lead times, partnering with vendors, and ensuring product availability and presentation don’t miss a beat.
Why It's Important
Get it wrong and you bleed margin through stockouts or overstock. Get it right and you cut carrying costs, lift turns, and keep customers smiling. It’s a direct lever on sales, cash flow, and space productivity.
How to Improve Inventory Management Skills
Sharpening inventory management takes method and rhythm:
Adopt a modern system: Use a cloud-based POS/ERP with real-time stock, multi-location visibility, barcode support, and automated replenishment (options include platforms like Lightspeed, Cin7, or Zoho Inventory).
Count proactively: Run cycle counts weekly, spot-check high-variance SKUs, and reconcile differences fast. Tighten receiving procedures and label everything.
Forecast with context: Blend sales history, seasonality, promotions, lead times, and supplier reliability. Use rolling forecasts and refresh safety stock as demand shifts.
Codify reorder logic: Set min/max levels, reorder points, EOQ where sensible, and exception alerts for items with erratic demand.
Elevate supplier collaboration: Share demand insights, align on lead-time SLAs, track OTIF (on-time, in-full), and maintain a vendor scorecard.
Right-size long-tail strategy: Use dropshipping or on-demand models for slow movers (providers such as DSers or Spocket are common) to avoid dead stock.
Standardize data: Clean SKUs, unify attributes, and retire duplicates. Bad data wrecks good planning.
These moves trim waste, improve product flow, and keep shelves—physical or digital—ready.
How to Display Inventory Management Skills on Your Resume
2. Visual Merchandising
Visual merchandising is the craft of arranging spaces and products to guide the eye, spark desire, and move baskets. It bridges brand storytelling and commercial intent—what customers feel and what they buy.
Why It's Important
Compelling visuals draw traffic, clarify choices, and nudge upsell without a word. Smart layouts and displays turn square footage into sell-through and brand memory.
How to Improve Visual Merchandising Skills
Design with purpose, then test like a scientist:
Know your shopper: Map missions (grab-and-go, browse, gifting), spend levels, and style preferences. Merchandise to match how they actually buy.
Engineer the flow: Use decompression zones, power walls, and clear sightlines. Place high-impact stories early; anchor destinations at the back.
Build crisp displays: Lean on the rule of three, strong focal points, clean spacing, and lighting that flatters color and texture.
Use a sign hierarchy: Keep offers and wayfinding clear. Price, feature, benefit—no clutter.
Refresh often: Calendar your changeovers for seasons, launches, and promos. Rotate hero SKUs to avoid display fatigue.
Merchandise adjacencies: Group complements to spark add-ons. Create stories, not islands.
Measure and iterate: Track lift vs. control, dwell time, heat maps if available. Keep what works, retire what doesn’t.
The result: displays that sell and a store that feels alive.
How to Display Visual Merchandising Skills on Your Resume
3. Retail Analytics
Retail analytics turns sales, inventory, traffic, and customer data into decisions. It’s the difference between guessing and knowing where to place bets.
Why It's Important
It guides assortments, pricing, promotions, and allocation—so products land where they’ll move, at prices that make sense, with fewer stock headaches and better margins.
How to Improve Retail Analytics Skills
Make data useful, fast, and actionable:
Unify the sources: Connect POS, ecomm, inventory, and CRM so KPIs share the same truth. No silos.
Build clear dashboards: Daily views for sales, sell-through, stock cover, and exceptions. Alerts for anomalies.
Forecast with rigor: Use seasonality, promo calendars, and lifecycle curves. Backtest, then adjust.
Segment customers: Cohorts by behavior, value, and lifecycle stage. Tailor offers and assortments to each group.
Optimize pricing: Test elasticity, run price and promo experiments, and track impact on both units and profit.
Expose supply blind spots: Monitor lead times, OTIF, and DC throughput. Analytics that find bottlenecks save weeks of pain.
Close the loop: Tie insights to actions—allocations, reorders, display tweaks—and measure results.
Data in motion beats data at rest. Decisions shouldn’t wait.
How to Display Retail Analytics Skills on Your Resume
4. POS Systems
Point of Sale systems combine hardware and software to process transactions, sync inventory, capture customer data, and report what’s really happening on the floor.
Why It's Important
A capable POS reduces friction at checkout, tightens inventory accuracy, supports omnichannel flows, and unlocks insights for merchandising moves.
How to Improve POS Systems Skills
Dial in the setup and workflows that matter:
Integrate inventory: Real-time stock updates across locations prevent phantom counts and stockouts.
Simplify the interface: Clean menus, smart search, and favorites for fast tickets. Training time plummets.
Go mobile: Mobile POS cuts lines, enables clienteling, and supports assisted selling anywhere in-store.
Offer flexible payments: Cards, wallets, contactless, gift cards, split tenders—make it easy.
Secure the stack: Enforce roles and permissions, enable encryption, and operate to PCI DSS standards.
Connect the ecosystem: Tie POS to CRM, ecommerce, accounting, and fulfillment. One spine, many limbs.
Report and alert: Auto-send daily KPIs, exception reports, and low-stock alerts so teams can act quickly.
Small tweaks at the register ripple through the entire operation.
How to Display POS Systems Skills on Your Resume
5. Excel Proficiency
Excel, in merchandising, is your Swiss Army knife: analysis, forecasting, reporting, and a fast way to model ideas before they hit the floor.
Why It's Important
From buy plans to sell-through reports, Excel powers decisions and communicates them clearly. The faster and cleaner you work, the more time you win back.
How to Improve Excel Proficiency Skills
Level up where it counts:
Formulas: Nail SUMIF(S), COUNTIF(S), XLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH, IF/IFS, TEXT functions, and dynamic arrays.
Pivot magic: Slice by location, category, season. Drill down, group, and create calculated fields.
Visualization: Build clean charts, sparklines, and dashboards with slicers for quick filtering.
Conditional formatting: Flag low stock, negative margins, aging inventory at a glance.
Data validation: Guard inputs with lists and rules. Garbage in, garbage everywhere.
Power Query & Power Pivot: Automate imports, transform messy data, and model across tables.
Macros/VBA: Automate repetitive tasks; template your weekly reports.
Practice on real data and your speed—and accuracy—soars.
How to Display Excel Proficiency Skills on Your Resume
6. Trend Forecasting
Trend forecasting predicts what customers will want next—styles, features, price points—so you can buy and merchandise ahead of the curve.
Why It's Important
It cuts guesswork, aligns assortments with demand, and reduces markdown risk. Be early without being wrong.
How to Improve Trend Forecasting Skills
Blend art and evidence:
Scan the market: Track runway to retail, trade shows, cultural cues, and competitor moves. Notice what sticks.
Listen to data: Mine POS and ecommerce searches, waitlists, returns, and reviews for signals.
Social listening: Watch creators, communities, and micro-trends that snowball into mainstream demand.
Test small, learn fast: Capsule buys, A/B product features, limited drops—then scale winners.
Plan the lifecycle: Map intro, peak, and exit windows. Protect margin with timely transitions.
Good forecasting feels intuitive because the homework was done.
How to Display Trend Forecasting Skills on Your Resume
7. SAP Retail
SAP for Retail centralizes merchandising, inventory, pricing, and sales data, giving coordinators a real-time control panel to plan and respond.
Why It's Important
With integrated processes and accurate data, you plan buys more intelligently, reduce stock headaches, and act on what’s selling where.
How to Improve SAP Retail Skills
Lean into the tools that matter most:
Strengthen master data: Clean article hierarchies, attributes, and pricing conditions. Bad masters, bad outcomes.
Use the right analytics: Leverage SAP CAR and embedded analytics for near real-time demand signals and inventory views.
Plan smarter: Employ SAP IBP for demand and supply planning. For scheduling, use S/4HANA embedded PP/DS where applicable.
Automate the routine: Apply workflows and process automation to price updates, listing, and replenishment.
Tailor UI and roles: Customize Fiori apps, authorizations, and tiles for merchandising users to cut clicks.
Train continuously: Regular refreshers on core transactions and new features keep teams efficient.
Stay current: Keep pace with S/4HANA updates and retail-specific enhancements for performance and security.
Configured well, SAP stops being a maze and turns into a map.
How to Display SAP Retail Skills on Your Resume
8. Planogram Design
Planogram design is the blueprint for what goes where on the shelf. It’s a visual plan that balances sales potential, brand blocks, and shopper convenience.
Why It's Important
Smart planograms boost space productivity, improve findability, and guide shoppers toward higher-value baskets.
How to Improve Planogram Design Skills
Design shelves that earn their keep:
Use sales and elasticity: Prioritize eye-level space for high-velocity or high-margin items and protect key facings.
Group with intent: Logical adjacencies and brand blocks drive cross-sell and reduce search time.
Respect the journey: Left-to-right reading, color stories, and clean verticals help the eye glide.
Seasonal flexibility: Build modular sections that swap quickly for promos and seasonal spikes.
Leverage software: Use modern planogram tools (including 3D simulation) for accuracy, compliance checks, and rapid scenario tests.
Audit and adjust: Validate compliance in-store, collect feedback, and iterate based on sales lift and out-of-stocks.
Collaborate with vendors: Tap category insights, fixtures, and co-op opportunities to amplify impact.
Good schematics reduce clutter and make decisions easy for shoppers.
How to Display Planogram Design Skills on Your Resume
9. Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop powers crisp visuals—mockups, signage, lookbooks, and digital assets that make merchandise pop.
Why It's Important
Stronger imagery boosts click-throughs, improves in-store comprehension, and keeps brand presentation consistent and on-brief.
How to Improve Adobe Photoshop Skills
Focus on the merchandising essentials:
Smart mockups: Use smart objects to drop products into lifestyle scenes and packaging templates quickly.
Color accuracy: Master white balance, curves, and selective color to keep products true-to-life.
Layers and masks: Work non-destructively for clean cutouts, shadows, and rapid revisions.
Batch actions: Automate repetitive edits and exports to save hours.
Typography and layout: Build a simple type system, align grids, and keep hierarchies clear in signage.
Export right: Optimize for web, print, and digital signage with proper color profiles and formats.
Speed plus polish—your assets should look good and ship fast.
How to Display Adobe Photoshop Skills on Your Resume
10. Market Research
Market research gathers signals from customers, competitors, and the broader category to inform what you sell, how you price, and where you play.
Why It's Important
It de-risks decisions. With clear insight, assortments fit demand, promotions resonate, and inventory moves rather than lingers.
How to Improve Market Research Skills
Cast a wide net, then distill:
Mine your data: Track conversion, AOV, basket comps, and dwell time. Look for friction points and surprise winners.
Gather feedback: Run quick surveys, intercepts, and post-purchase polls; study product reviews for themes.
Audit competitors: Assess price ladders, promos, assortment breadth, and new launches regularly.
Watch channel shifts: Note differences between store, marketplace, and direct channels—signals travel differently.
Synthesize into action: Turn findings into buy plans, display guidelines, and pricing tests with owners and timelines.
Insight without action is trivia. Ship the changes.
How to Display Market Research Skills on Your Resume
11. Negotiation
Negotiation is the structured conversation with vendors about price, terms, lead times, and support—aimed at win-win, but grounded in your numbers.
Why It's Important
Better terms protect margin, improve supply reliability, and unlock marketing funds. Relationships flourish when deals are fair and clear.
How to Improve Negotiation Skills
Prepare deeply, then steer the dialogue:
Define your BATNA: Know your best alternative and walk-away points before talks begin.
Bring facts: Share demand forecasts, sell-through, and category benchmarks to justify asks.
Trade strategically: Use a give/get log—every concession earns something back (terms, co-op, exclusives).
Bundle issues: Price, payment terms, marketing, and service levels—package them to expand value.
Lock clarity: Summarize agreements in writing, add KPIs, and schedule QBRs with scorecards.
Calm, prepared, curious—the trio that closes good deals.
How to Display Negotiation Skills on Your Resume
12. Salesforce CRM
Salesforce centralizes customer data, sales activity, and marketing touchpoints—giving merchandising a clear window into who’s buying, how often, and why.
Why It's Important
With cleaner data and smarter workflows, you can tailor assortments, target offers, and coordinate with sales and marketing without the guesswork.
How to Improve Salesforce CRM Skills
Shape Salesforce around merchandising goals:
Customize the model: Create fields, page layouts, and flows that reflect products, suppliers, promotions, and store needs.
Integrate systems: Sync Salesforce with ERP, POS, and inventory for current stock, orders, and customer history.
Build useful dashboards: Track sell-through, repeat purchase, promo ROI, and lead times—visible to the right teams.
Automate touchpoints: Trigger follow-ups, replenishment alerts, and campaign enrollments from customer behavior.
Mobilize the team: Use the mobile app for on-the-go access during store walks and vendor meetings.
Guard data quality: Enforce validation rules, dedupe, and set ownership to keep records trustworthy.
Drive adoption: Provide role-based training, quick reference guides, and office-hour support.
When the CRM sings, your merchandising decisions echo across the business, loudly and clearly.
How to Display Salesforce CRM Skills on Your Resume
