Specialist, Buying (12 Months Contract)

 

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

 

This role is responsible for supporting Own Retail (ORT) business by implementing all day-to-day trading activities of the department by reviewing buy and work closely with In-season Trading (IST) team to focus upon delivering of planned sales, margin and terminal stock objectives.

This includes:

• Implementation of Merchandising Country Strategy
• Execution of the Merchandising End-to-End (E2E) process
• Planning the right buying strategy & buy volume for ORT
• Monitoring all in season activities for Franchise BLR
• Finalize assortment planning for ORT
• Providing feedback to SEA DTC Buying Department

 

Abbreviations:

• DTC: Direct to Consumer
• ORT: Own Retail
• FRS: Franchise
• BLR: Brand Led Retail
• OTB: Open to Buy
• A&R: Allocation & Replenishment
• EOS: End of Season
• PLC: Product Lifecycle
• E2E: End to End

 

Key Responsibilities: 

 

• Support the implementation of key strategic priorities in the country across ORT within the SEA DTC Buying Department framework. 
• Responsible for the Buy in the country for ORT.
• Prepare Forecast and place Final Orders at an article level based on the given Open-To-Buy (OTB) budget for ORT.  
• Drive and achieve Benchmarks and KPIs on productivity and sell-through which are aligned with SEA DTC Buying Department.
• Build the right product mix based on the share of business of store formats, product categories, store types, age and gender mix for ORT.
• Review and implement the right buying analysis by categories for ORT.
• Support our ORT to ensure their sell-in buy is appropriate by giving them the right range recommendation per store based on SEA DTC Buying seasonal strategies
• Provide guidance to ORT to ensure that all merchandising strategies and principles are executed timely and correctly.
• Review and apply correct size ratios for order placement for ORT.
• Ensure orders are placed accurately and on-time for ORT.
• Carry out and ensure products are launched on time with adequate stock for ORT.
• Work closely with In-season Trading (IST)/ Store Operations to ensure product grading and product option plan are in line with space management guideline (pre-season) for ORT.
• Work closely with IST key person in monitoring and ensure that the Best Sellers are fully replenished on a weekly basis.
• Compile each store’s capacity plan for reference during the Buying process. 
• Generate and analyze ORT’s Key Buy, Sales and Inventory reports.
• Ensure in-season chase models (SPEED, In-Season-Creation and Planned-Responsiveness) are well managed to make sure inventory is optimal for ORT.
• Follow ORT store-visit schedule to achieve an expected amount of time spent in the stores.  Ratio of time to be spent in office versus stores is recommended as 60%/40% respectively.
• Analyze ORT (SVP) Store Visits Pack prior to store visits.

 

 

Key Relationships:

 

• Internal: Own retail stores, Country Retail Operation Team, Country Category Marketing, Country Finance, SEA DTC Buying team.

 

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

 

• Datamining & Presentation skills
• Strong analytical mind set - detail and numbers oriented
• Advanced Excel/computer skills
• Business Acumen & problem solving skills
• Category know how - products, ranges, market trends
• Big picture thinking
• Process and system understanding
• Collaboration & Influencing skills
• Ability to multitask

 

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:

 

Educational:

• University degree in business, ideally with marketing and sales focus or equivalent professional experience
• Merchandising/Retail Finance/ Business Analytics Experience: 4-5 years
• Management Experience:0-2 years

 

Functional:

• Merchandising skills with a minimum 4-5 years’ experience in retail planning and operations
• Fluency in English
• Exposure in managing multiple markets will be a plus
• Industry: Preferably in apparel/ fashion/ FW or FMCG Retail
• Exposure: Sports, Fashion