Buyer - Footwear

Merry Hill Group; Rochdale; Hybrid; GBP 10,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking an experienced Buyer for their Footwear department. This role offers the chance to significantly impact buying opportunities across various platforms, fostering growth and innovation. The ideal candidate will possess a strong background in multi-channel retail buying, coupled with excellent commercial awareness and communication skills. You'll be responsible for managing brand relationships, forecasting, and mentoring junior staff, all while contributing to a dynamic team environment. Join a forward-thinking company that values diversity and personal development, where your success is paramount to the organization's growth.

Qualifications

• Proven work experience in a multi-channel retail buying department.
• Excellent commercial awareness and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Manage brand relationships and seek new partnership opportunities.
• Forecast and plan by brand and product group.
• Coach and develop junior team members.

Skills

Commercial Awareness

Communication Skills

Relationship Management

Forecasting and Planning

Education

Experience in Multi-Channel Retail Buying

Job description

Description

We are hiring an experienced Buyer to work across our Footwear department. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to impact buying opportunities across Footasylum stores, websites and ultimately contribute to the growth of the business.

Responsibilities

• Manage existing brand relationships and seek new brand partnership opportunities
• Attend key product meetings, contributing and feeding back relevant business and marketplace insights
• Maintain communication with the supplier base, identifying any issues and taking appropriate action
• Forecast and plan by brand and product group
• Maintain effective internal relationships with other departments, most notably with Merchandising and Marketing
• Coach, support and develop junior team members in order to train and aid development in their roles
• Contribute towards the category buying strategy by informing consumer-centric decision making
• Take ownership and accountability for all aspects of your product file, using your judgement to manage stock levels, profitability and seasonal product flow
• Initiate and research new business opportunities
• Research and present brand, product group and consumer performance for internal insights
• Conduct research trips to our stores, competitors, and relevant events to provide key information on new trends

We are looking for someone who has proven work experience within a multi-channel retail buying department. The ideal candidate will have enthusiasm for the Footasylum product and what we stand for. You will be driven, ambitious and motivated, and Footasylum will harness this into your development. We encourage people to defy ordinary.

You’ll need to have excellent commercial awareness and communication skills.

Why Footasylum?

We are one of the leading omni-channel retailers across the UK, but more than that we are a brilliant place to work. We value you and your development. We have loads of examples of people moving upwards, across to other departments and given training to excel their personal and professional skills.

Our aim is to create a fun environment, where your success is paramount to ours and you are given the right tools, support and platform to achieve your goals.

Diversity

We recognise and value the importance of diversity to help make sure we have lots of different perspectives when we are providing service to our colleagues and customers. We know that this will help us build a great service, which our customers will love. This is great news for our business. Diversity for us is also, importantly, about building happy teams full of people that want to learn and want to be inspired by each other and our different experiences.

Recruitment Process

We review applications on an individual basis, and if we feel you would be a good fit we’ll invite you for a call or Teams video for an informal chat about the role, and to see if we’re a good fit for you.

We value open and honest conversations and collaboration, giving you a chance to learn about what we are doing in an informal and friendly environment. We want to know about you and why you feel that this is the opportunity for you.

Please note, this is not a remote role and our expectation is that you will be able to attend Head Office in a hybrid way, in Greater Manchester.