Senior Buyer Men's Footwear Buying · Head Office

Footasylum Ltd; Manchester; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading UK retailer is seeking a Senior Men’s Footwear Buyer to lead the buying strategy and manage relationships with brands. The role requires a minimum of 5 years of buying experience, strong leadership, and analytical skills. This position is based in Greater Manchester and is not remote. By joining, you'll contribute to a forward-thinking environment prioritizing teamwork and personal development.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years experience in Buying roles.
• Strong leadership skills required.
• Experience in strategy creation and delivery.

Responsibilities

• Lead seasonal buying strategy for Product Division.
• Drive brand budget planning and align with merchandising.
• Research consumer and brand trends continuously.

Skills

Leadership skills

Relationship building

Analytical skills

Market awareness

Tools

Excel

Power BI

Job description

Overview

As a Senior Men’s Footwear Buyer you will lead a key Buying division, working closely with the Head of Dept to support the buying strategy and delivery of business goals. Working closely with 3rd Party and Own Brands you will ensure best in class brands and products relevant to target consumer are present in Footasylum Stores and on the Ecommerce site for your product division.

Responsibilities

• Support in Creation of the seasonal Footasylum Buying Strategy for your Product Division ensuring alignment with other Buyers and key cross functional stakeholders (Own Brands, Marketing, Merchandising etc).
• Support in driving brand budget planning, aligning with the Merchandising function for relevant product division.
• Play a key role in the seasonal buying meetings with strategic 3rd Party brands and Own Brands, aligning with key stakeholders (e.g. Merchandising, Other Divisions, GPM, Marketing).
• Lead SMU creation with relevant brands for relevant Product Division.
• Support Buyers with the seasonal buying of non-strategic 3rd Party brands.
• Accountable for the seasonal Product File including taking a lead in seasonal sign offs.
• Ensure continuous contact out of buying seasons with key 3rd Party Brands to ensure Footasylum product needs are met.
• Support in short-, medium- and long-term strategic relationship building with key 3rd Party Brands.
• Lead the development of direct reports through continuous coaching and implementation of HR tools (PDPs, Check Ins etc).
• Lead the continuous research into consumer and brands trends in the relevant Product Division, sharing with all relevant stakeholders.
• Ongoing monitoring of business performance and implement relevant action plans.

Requirement

• Minimum 5 years experience in Buying roles, demonstrating strong Leadership skills.
• Excellent internal and external relationship builder.
• Experience in creating and delivering strategies.
• Forward thinker and reactive to market situations to ensure Footasylum stays ahead of competition and relevant with target consumer demands.
• Analytical skills (excel and Power BI knowledge essential).

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 to create a fun environment, where your success is paramount to ours and your 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 building products and services. We know that this will help us build useful and accessible things 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 and Warehouse in Greater Manchester.