The traditional model for building a retail planning function goes something like this: hire a VP of Planning, give them a team, and let them build the process. It works — eventually. But it is slow, expensive, and carries significant execution risk. The VP needs time to learn the business, build relationships, and design the infrastructure. Meanwhile, the brand is making buy decisions, managing inventory, and taking markdowns without the strategic oversight it needs.
The Cost-Benefit Problem
A full-time VP of Planning at a mid-market retail brand costs $250,000 to $350,000 all-in, including base salary, bonus, benefits, and equity. For a brand doing $50M to $200M in revenue, that is a meaningful fixed cost — and it is a cost that is incurred year-round, regardless of whether the business needs senior planning leadership year-round.
The reality is that most retail brands have two or three critical planning inflection points per year: the seasonal buy, the mid-season OTB review, and the end-of-season markdown strategy. Outside of these windows, the day-to-day planning work can be managed by a competent analyst team with the right tools and processes in place. The question is whether you need a $300,000 executive to manage those analysts year-round, or whether you need a $300,000 executive for 12 to 16 weeks per year to design the strategy and build the infrastructure.
"The fractional model is not a compromise. It is a capital allocation decision — the same discipline you apply to inventory, applied to leadership."
Peng Huang
What a Fractional Engagement Actually Looks Like
A fractional planning engagement is typically structured around a defined scope of work rather than a time commitment. The engagement might be: redesign the OTB process and build the supporting tools (12 weeks). Or: implement an S&OP cadence and train the team to run it (16 weeks). Or: build an allocation engine for core products and document the operating model (10 weeks).
- 01Defined scope: a specific process, tool, or capability to be built and handed off
- 02Fixed timeline: typically 10–20 weeks, with clear milestones and deliverables
- 03Knowledge transfer: the engagement ends with the internal team fully capable of running the new process
- 04Ongoing availability: most fractional engagements include a retainer for ongoing questions and quarterly reviews
Who It's Right For
The fractional model is most effective for brands at a specific inflection point: they have outgrown their current planning infrastructure, they know they need to upgrade, but they are not yet at the scale where a full-time VP of Planning is the right capital allocation. Typically, this is a brand doing $30M to $150M in revenue, with a planning team of 2 to 5 people, that is hitting the ceiling of what spreadsheet-based planning can support.
It is also the right model for brands that have a full-time planning leader but need specialized expertise for a specific initiative — an OTB rebuild, an S&OP implementation, an allocation engine build — that falls outside the current team's capabilities.