Buying and Merchandise Director - Kidswear

Job description / Role

Business Planning and Budgeting
- Participate in the annual business planning and provide inputs to the senior managment team
- Create the overall product and merchandizing strategy (private vs international brands) for the Concept
- Analyze Concept strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats vis a vis competition and assess market opportunity Oversee the category/brand management with the objective of maximizing sales and profits
- Plan and approve the merchandising budget for the category/brand
- Liaise with the process excellence team to spearhead continual improvement in Buying & Merchandising processes

Category/Brand Management
- Develop comprehensive category/brand business plans that are consistent with the company's overall goals and strategies for assigned categories/brands
- Ensure growth in the sales and gross margins for all categories/brands by driving focus on individual categories/brands Plan and approve the buying budget for the category/brand
- Oversee overall category/brand plans in the areas of pricing, promotion, assortment and allocation for each category/brand
- Monitor and review the performance of category/brand business plans by using appropriate scorecard for measuring category/brand performance
- Ensure collaboration between category/brand managers to leverage efficiencies in procurement, transportation, warehousing and store operations
- Maintain relationships with key vendors who are critical for the long term success of the business

Buying Budget and Planning
- Determine buying requirements and formulate buying plan and budget for the assigned department/category
- Align the buying plan to the overall department/category business plan and the merchandize strategy as laid down by the department/ category manager
- Help meet the profit targets by ensuring timely procurement of the department/category Merchandise
- Pursue cost reduction measures through centralized bulk buying and/ or selecting appropriate vendor mix, scanning the environment for benchmarks and constantly improving the purchase process

Vendor Management
- Develop an adequate vendor base for the concept through active scouting and negotiation / renegotiation
- Build and maintain relationships with vendors and suppliers and negotiate the best deals with them for procuring merchandise
- Maintain contact with vendors; update list of vendors for bidding purposes; attend product demonstrations, obtain samples and literature regarding potential products and vendor capabilities and confer with end users
- Identify, evaluate and select appropriate vendor mix to achieve business objectives

Requirements

- Strong Leadership Skills
- Sharp Negotiation Skills
- Vendor Management
- People Management
- Strong Business Acumen
- Influencing Skills
- AN ABSOLUTE MUST CANDIDATES MUST HAVE EXPERIENCE IN BUYING AND MERCHANDISING WITH KIDS WEAR

About the Company

iConnect is an international recruitment resource consultancy based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

iConnect is engaged in the recruitment of executives for the retail, healthcare and hospitality industries, utilising traditional recruitment methods and specialist headhunting activity.

At iConnect we understand that attracting and retaining great people is harder than ever and that the activity of recruiting can be time consuming, difficult and expensive. By listening and understanding our client’s human resource requirements we are able to place the best candidates at the first time of asking.

Our Recruitment Consultants are all highly trained and work unique specialist markets. This specialist focus allows them to understand the executive recruitment needs of both our clients and candidates.