Role Summary

Responsible for leading the end-to-end buying strategy across the category. This includes identifying trends, sourcing products globally, supporting negotiating supplier terms and curating a commercially viable, design-led assortment. This role plays a key part in shaping the brand’s identity and ensuring the offering meets customer expectations in quality, style, value, and availability.

Duties and responsibilities

• Own full category commercial performance, delivering sales, gross margin, intake margin, and cash targets through disciplined range architecture, supplier strategy, and pricing governance.
• Define and execute a 12–24-month category strategy, aligned to business growth plans, clearly articulating range structure (Good/Better/Best), price ladders, option depth, and SKU productivity targets.
• Drive margin expansion through structured supplier negotiation, cost engineering, volume consolidation, and long-term partnership planning without compromising brand positioning.
• Lead structured range planning and lifecycle management, reducing SKU complexity, improving stock turn, and eliminating underperforming lines based on data-led decision-making.
• Translate brand positioning into commercially viable product frameworks, ensuring quality, design, price architecture, and finish standards reinforce profitability and market differentiation.
• Develop market-led product strategies, integrating trend forecasting, customer insight, competitive benchmarking, and performance analytics to identify high-return opportunities.
• Identify and close category gaps, proactively scoping new supplier partnerships, innovation opportunities, and first-to-market launches that drive incremental revenue and protect competitive advantage.
• Build and maintain a resilient, optimized supply base, consolidating suppliers where appropriate to increase leverage, reduce risk, and improve operational efficiency.
• Lead annual and seasonal supplier business planning sessions, agreeing on growth targets, margin expectations, service level improvements, and joint development roadmaps.
• Own pricing strategy and promotional architecture, ensuring clear price hierarchies and disciplined discounting to protect gross margin while driving volume growth.
• Monitor and act on trading performance weekly, using sales, cancellation, return, and margin data to refine SKU selection, adjust intake, and drive continuous optimization.
• Oversee end-to-end product delivery performance, partnering with Purchasing and Supply functions to improve OTIF, lead time reliability, and aftersales performance.
• Drive cost engineering initiatives, working with factories and suppliers to optimize materials, packaging, logistics, and specification efficiencies.
• Embed customer insight within category workflows, challenging assumptions, and ensuring buying decisions are data-informed rather than opinion-led.
• Build and maintain a live supply base strategy, focused on long-term resilience, margin improvement, geopolitical risk mitigation, and sourcing optimization.
• Own critical path governance, ensuring disciplined launch planning, early risk identification, and cross-functional alignment to hit key commercial launch windows.
• Lead and develop Buyers and Buying Assistants, setting clear commercial KPIs, providing regular performance feedback, and building capability in negotiation, data literacy, and strategic thinking.
• Represent the category at senior leadership level, presenting structured plans, risk assessments, and performance updates with clarity and commercial rigor.
• Continuously improve team processes and data integrity, ensuring accurate reporting, streamlined workflows, and scalable operating standards.