Junior Buyer Womenswear Brands

**Summary**

From Merchandising and Marketing - Product Development and Design, through to Supply Chain and Space Planning - our mission is to bring stylish wardrobe, home and beauty essentials to our customers via an easy, inspiring shopping experience online and in store that will delight them every time.

As we accelerate the transformation of our business to suit the changing needs of our customer, we need results-orientated colleagues that not only have a passion for our product, but a strong team working ethos, creativity and a healthy commercial aim to join us on our journey.
**All the details**

To stay close to customers, our support teams are in the office three days a week as we believe that skills are developed through collaboration, and that spending time together makes us more creative and connected

**What's in it for you**

**Being a part of M&S is exactly that - playing your part to bring the magic of M&S to our customers every day. We’re an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing exceptional quality, value, service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us. Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special **
- After completing your probationary period, you’ll receive 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.
- Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days
- Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.
- A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
- A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.
- Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.
- Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal policies, providing support and flexibility for your family.
- Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support for all colleagues including access to our 24/7 Virtual GP and PAM Assist to support you and your family.
- A charity volunteer day to support a charity or cause you're passionate about through a dedicated day away from work

**What you’ll do**

As the Womenswear Brands Junior Buyer you will be working closely with our 3rd Party Brand Partners to create the optimum womenswear apparel product assortment that exceeds customer expectations.

Key accountabilities and measures
- Create positive partnerships with our brands, establishing strong direct relationships quickly and leveraging these to develop a long-term benefit to M&S. Build strong relationships internally and externally to train, engage and equip all relevant parties with the information and guidance to effect successful and commercial trading partnerships.
- Act as the key interface with all brands to deliver the best product choice, customer experience and ensure ease of working across all key retail levers: - selection, availability, supply chain, operational efficiency, and marketing.
- Ensure product selection and size of offer adheres to key principles of price stretch, range scale and choice that compliments M&S Brands and customer aspirations.
- Be the ambassador of the brand internally by liaising with cross functional departments including retail, supply chain, e-com and marketing to ensure all operations runs smoothly.
- Constantly monitor sales and range offering to ensure commercial and customer aspirations are potentialised, liaising with brands to curate and amend accordingly. Ensure business units are regularly and succinctly updated with progress, status, and learnings, allowing for feedback and input to be incorporated.
- Accountable for ensuring all contractual, business process, business plans and critical paths are shared, up to date and complete. Work with Legal, Finance and C&H Business Units to deliver this.

**Who you are**

Your skills and experience will include
- Experience of working in branded Womenswear to Senior Assistant Buyer or Junior Buyer level, with a strong product affinity. Understanding customer appeal and product and how this will complement the M&S brand is critical.
- Strong relationship building and communication skills to foster collaborative and effective engagement with brand partners.
- Open to change and playing an important role in establishing the adoption of 3rd Party Brands within the complex and evolving M&S world
- Appreciation of internal cross functional departments and key interactions required to establish integrated processes and ease of working - ability to make things happen across the business is critical in this role so being organised and tenacious will be key.
- Strong commercial acumen - understanding how price, margin and costs impact the Brand and M&S profitability
- Understand