Demand Analyst (Remote, USA)

Are you a supply chain professional who sees stories in spreadsheets and knows how to turn them into smart, timely inventory decisions? Do you have a passion for motorsports and want your analytical skills to directly influence lap times and customer satisfaction? Apex Wheels is looking for a Demand Analyst to join our growing Supply Chain team and help ensure that the right wheels are always in the right place—exactly when our customers need them.

Who are we?

Apex is a leading provider of high-performance automotive wheels and accessories, catering to the motorsport and performance car enthusiast community. Our mission is to provide wheels that deliver real and measurable performance and to protect consumers from a misleading industry full of fashion-focused wheels through exciting technical education. 

Objective

The Supply Chain team keeps inventory flowing smoothly from vendor to customer. As our Demand Analyst, you will own the sales‑forecasting engine that powers every purchasing decision, ensuring our Demand & Inventory Manager always has a forward‑looking view of what to buy, when, and how much. Your insights will let Apex meet customer demand without tying up unnecessary capital, freeing leadership to focus on strategic expansion.

Job Summary

Apex’s Demand Analyst will turn raw sales and inventory data into clear, forward-looking plans that keep our shelves stocked with exactly what’s needed - never too much, never too little. In this role, you’ll translate real-world events like new fitment launches, flash sales, or sudden surges in interest into accurate, data-backed forecasts that drive smarter inventory and purchasing decisions. Your ability to identify patterns and translate them into actionable strategy will directly impact how quickly we meet customer demand, control costs, and seize opportunities.

Unlike companies selling generic, interchangeable goods, Apex designs and manufactures wheels engineered to precise specifications for specific vehicles. Each SKU serves a distinct enthusiast, performance goal, or fitment need. This specialization means your forecasting decisions have real consequences whether ensuring a customer gets wheels in time for a track event or avoiding excess inventory for a spec that didn’t resonate with the community.

To excel, you’ll need to go beyond spreadsheets and surface-level trends. Working closely with our Fitment Experts, you’ll gain insight into how different vehicle markets evolve and learn to separate real demand shifts from short-term noise. What will set you apart is your product knowledge. By diving into our catalog and understanding what makes each wheel unique, you’ll unlock forecasting precision that data alone can’t provide. This combination of technical insight and analytical thinking will help you spot issues before they escalate and identify trends before they’re widely visible.

Your core responsibility is to produce dynamic forecasts and inventory targets that guide Apex’s planning and purchasing decisions. These will inform monthly budgets, purchase orders, and broader investment strategies. This isn’t a role where you can rely on off-the-shelf demand planning software to do the thinking for you. You’ll need to evaluate the spreadsheets and logic we currently use, understand what’s driving decisions, and refine or rebuild those tools to make them even better. That requires analytical expertise, attention to detail, and the communication skills to explain your reasoning clearly to stakeholders across the organization.

Once onboarded, you’ll work with a high degree of autonomy while staying closely aligned with purchasing, customer experience, and accounting to ensure everyone is on the same page. If you love building models, challenging questionable data, and raising the flag when something looks off, you’ll thrive here. A typical week could involve recalibrating seasonality curves, reconciling stock levels to identify shortages, modeling shipping cost scenarios for the CFO, or jumping into a meeting to explain why a sudden spike in demand is likely temporary.

Over time, you’ll own the tools, cadence, and accuracy metrics that define demand planning at Apex. Your work may be individual, but your influence will be company-wide driving purchasing decisions, supporting Finance with cash flow projections, helping Customer Service set realistic ETAs, and guiding Marketing and Sales based on real inventory constraints and opportunities. Success in this role means closing the gap between data and decisions so Apex can grow smarter and leaner.

As you grow, we’ll also rely on you to explore how AI can support and scale your work. Whether it’s analyzing historical trends more deeply or automating parts of your workflow, we’ll look to you to evaluate where AI adds the most value. Before hiring more headcount, we’ll ask you to assess whether a smart tool could solve the problem. Your ability to integrate scalable, intelligent solutions into your process will be key to keeping Apex agile and data-driven.

This is a salaried position and is exempt from overtime. Your core team works on Pacific hours, and so you’ll need to be comfortable working on West Coast hours, regardless of what time zone you are located in.

Who are you?

• You're a spreadsheet power user with the brain of a strategist and the soul of a racer. Whether you spend your weekends wrenching in the garage or you just know how to break down demand by wheel bolt pattern and width offset, you care about how your work connects to performance on and off the track.
• You either already speak our enthusiast language or you’re hungry to learn. You can explain what affects a wheel’s popularity, what doesn’t, and how that should inform a purchasing decision.
• You have a natural curiosity for how numbers explain real‑world outcomes, and you bring order to data the way others organize a desk. 
•  Accuracy matters to you, hitting a forecast within a few percentage points feels like a clear win.
• Your first response to an unexpected sales spike is to investigate causes and adjust the model before anyone asks. You manage details systematically, meet deadlines reliably, and are comfortable discarding outdated assumptions when fresh data suggests a better approach.
• You work well cross-functionally, partnering with Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, and Fulfillment teams to ensure demand plans are accurate, responsive, and aligned with business goals.

How to Apply

In your cover letter, please describe a specific instance where you used new or previously untapped data to adjust a production or demand forecast. Explain what data you used, how you identified its relevance, how you integrated it into your forecast model, and what the impact was on the company’s operations or performance. 

Responsibilities

• Demand Planning & Forecasting: Build, maintain, and continuously refine statistical and trend‑based demand forecasts across multiple time horizons (monthly, quarterly, annual). Develop dynamic tools to categorize product movement (A‑E movers) and pair wheel SKUs for bundled demand, mirroring systems pioneered by our Demand &  Inventory Manager. Develop a deep understanding of our catalogue and specific markets, allowing you to add a human element to your forecasting. Translate marketing campaigns, product launches, external environmental factors, and seasonality into forecast adjustments; communicate impacts to Purchasing and Finance. 
• Inventory Planning & Forecasting: Align forecasts with internal data to ensure that we have enough inventory in good standing to meet existing and future demand without holding too much in excess. Calculate safety stock, reorder points, and preferred inventory levels that balance service rate goals and cash‑flow constraints. Monitor transitory inventory (in‑production, in‑transit, at 3PL) to provide holistic availability views.
• Data Stewardship & Reporting: Own the integrity of demand‑planning data in NetSuite and connected tools; audit for anomalies and drive root‑cause fixes. Produce weekly and ad‑hoc dashboards for executives, inventory turn rate, forecast accuracy, and aged inventory. Daily, weekly, and monthly KPI reporting for the department to give stakeholders insight into internal Supply Chain operations and our 3PL.
• Process Improvement: Identify and automate manual data pulls; streamline the hand‑off between forecasting and PO creation. Partner with eCommerce to implement new SKU schemas (e.g., WIN codes) so that the process is more automated. 
• Cross‑Functional Collaboration: Support the Purchasing Coordinator with forecast inputs for PO timing and container bookings. Provide ETA updates to Customer Service; supply pairing guidance to Sales; align forecast assumptions with Marketing’s campaign calendar. 

About the Work Environment

While performing the duties of this job, the employee may be regularly required to stand, sit, talk, hear, reach, stoop, kneel, and use hands and fingers to operate a computer, telephone, and keyboard. Ability to sit at a computer terminal for an extended period. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision requirements due to computer work. Regular, predictable attendance is required. You’ll have a high degree of control over your working environment, as you’ll be primarily working from your home office.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Statistics, Business Analytics, or a related field
• APICS/IBF certification is a plus.
• 5+ years of experience working in a professional environment.
• 3+ years in demand planning, supply‑chain analytics, or inventory management; experience in multi‑SKU consumer products preferred.
• Advanced spreadsheet skills (nested formulas, pivot tables, error checking) plus familiarity with data visualization tools are essential.
• Working knowledge of statistical forecasting methods (moving averages, exponential smoothing, regression) and willingness to dive deeper.
• Working knowledge of databases and tools like SQL is strongly preferred.
• Hands‑on experience with an ERP (NetSuite strongly preferred) and at least one demand‑planning or forecasting add‑on/module.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, able to explain complex findings in plain English to executives and warehouse staff alike.
• Passion for motorsports is highly valued.
• Preference given to residents of AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, TX, WA, or WI.

Benefits

• $66,000 - $85,000 annual salary, depending on experience and location, plus the opportunity for performance-based pay.
• 100% Apex paid employee medical, dental, and vision benefits with buy-up options
• Robust company contributions towards dependent medical benefits
• 401 (k) with employer matching
• 2 weeks of paid vacation leave - earn more over time AND earn more as you grow
• A flexible working environment where work/life integration is encouraged
• Paid Sick Leave
• Paid Holidays
• Support your track addiction with reimbursements for HPDE and autocross event registration fees
• Eligibility for the SEMA college grant and loan forgiveness program
• Casual in-office dress environment where T-shirts, jeans, and shorts are welcome
• Employee discounts and freebies on Apex products and swag
• Participate in company activities, including karting, spectating at races, track days, and more