Assistant Buyer

Our Role

To assist the Buyer with ensuring that sales and profit targets are met through the development of a commercial, well balanced product range in keeping with Brand objectives. With increased responsibility in a given category or area, demonstrate excellent market awareness as well as flare for innovation. To manage and develop the junior members of the team as appropriate.

• To assist the Buyer in building a balanced, customer focused range, working closely with Design & Creative teams to ensure the product range is sufficiently innovative, driving the newness suitable for the needs of all business channels.
• Assist the Buyer in driving business initiatives, new products & on‑boarding new suppliers
• Demonstrate a sound understanding of product construction/fit with the ability to contribute to product reviews. Ability to propose recommendations on lab dips and bulk submissions
• To work closely with the QA department throughout the development process to ensure sealing stages are running to critical path requirements, that we can meet quality standards, highlighting product risk where necessary
• Manage a complex critical path with varied lead times, ability to work efficiently across seasons ensuring key dates and risk is managed appropriately
• To ensure that all product line lists, and product sheets are correctly maintained on the system in line with departmental deadlines.
• Support product business meeting across functions, shoot outfitting, store training. Participating as an ambassador for your product areas
• Understanding of your target margin and the ability to highlight areas of risk
• Manage department space efficiently with junior team

• To maintain regular communication with suppliers and to tackle issues in a timely manner. To elevate risk as necessary to the Buyer in order to protect this partnership and manage any poor performance effectively
• Manage the co‑ordination of product brief sheets to samples and necessary information to enable selection meetings to run efficiently and to ensure deadlines are met
• Ability to deputise for Buyer and actively contribute to the running and organisation of supplier meetings
• To assist the Buyer in collating the sourcing strategy and risk management.
• In given area demonstrate a good working practise with supply base, sharing information of trend, trade & competition activity to gain further insight
• Ensure suppliers have a full understanding of standard packaging & ticketing details. Drive new ticket development based on unique product specifications

• Building strong relationships with both internal & external business partners
• Ability to deputise for Buyer in running weekly CP meetings ensuring all stakeholders are present and action points agreed and escalated
• To have a good understanding of the target customer through regular store visits & be pro‑active in seeking customer feedback from all business channels.
• To undertake store visits and competitor appraisals. Completing thorough assessment and recommendations on both trading, price positioning and product development for UK & US market
• To understand the key sales, profit and margin drivers across the business and the impact of your individual responsibility area & general role.
• To develop a robust understanding of the weekly pack and sales by line reports, in order to propose trading actions, to identify opportunities across all channels and trade open to buy
• For a designated product area to demonstrate proficient range building skills. Involvement in store & customer profiling to gain further understanding on range construction planning.
• Contribute to departmental Strategy seasonally, feeding in both research & performance feedback
• Receive and challenge open costing’s, display a good understanding of the costing model
• Demonstrate a clear passion for your area, with an eagerness to increase understanding, taking pride in your product, presentation, accuracy & new challenges

• To continually review processes and controls, initiating improvements in best practice as necessary.
• To assist in the development and…