Category Lead

**What’s the role about?**:
This is an exciting opportunity to join the team as a Category Lead for a multi-category area.

To be successful in this role, you will be a highly experienced, commercial, customer focused and strategic individual with experience of Buying and/or Merchandising as well as customer proposition development. You will have experience of managing teams and influencing internal and external stakeholders.

As a Category Lead, you will steer and develop your Category Buying, Merchandising and Services (where appropriate) team to deliver a commercially balanced product assortment as an integral part of your Category Proposition Group, that drives customer satisfaction and maximises sales,stock and profit contribution through effective use of trading levers and management of risk.

You will work at pace, with agility, to proactively take opportunities within the market to exceed customers expectations and create industry leading propositions informed by market trend data and insight that reflect an appropriate pricing architecture. As well as this, you will be a highly skilled negotiator adept at managing supplier relationships at senior levels.

In addition, you will be responsible for developing the strategic direction of your category, using your market knowledge and business & customer insight, in line with the Head of Category and Head of Merchandising’s category vision. At the same time you will play a part in influencing the wider Category strategy & direction. Where appropriate you will be accountable for supporting the development of ranges and trading plans across both John Lewis and Waitrose (category dependent).

**What will you be doing?**:

- Overall Buying & Merchandising for Category and as category expert, create recommendations for End to End customer experience to the Head of Category.
- Develop, select and negotiate product ranges in tune with customer demand & target segments.
- Create, plan and deliver a customer focused, commercial assortment that maximises sales and margin while minimising risk in line with space and SKU count parameters.
- Accurately forecast sales,stock, profit and SKUs each season by channel.
- Create category budgets aligning to brand and propositional strategies and plans.
- Forecast market changes and proactively adapt commercial plans to potentialise.
- Maximise key trading levers within brand and propositional parameters including price, promotion, assortment, mix and newness.
- Develop a supply base strategy to support assortment vision and long-term strategic aims.
- Negotiate robust trading terms with all suppliers to achieve budgeted sales and margin targets.
- Control inventory levels and open to buy and work with key stakeholders to maximise availability across channels.
- Be responsible for people management, development and coaching for Category Buyers, Merchandisers and Service Managers (where applicable).
- Lead & energise team and prioritise workload.

**Why do our Category Leads love working for us?**:
The John Lewis Partnership is the UK’s largest employee owned business and parent company of our two cherished retail brands - John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners. Everything we do is powered by our unique purpose, which puts the happiness of our Partners at its core. Our Partnership Values define how we work. Every one of us is committed to offering our customers quality products, great quality food and outstanding service, because for us, it’s personal.

John Lewis stocks over 350,000 product lines in-store and more than 250,000 lines online. Running a business like John Lewis is no mean feat. But every single one of our Partners rises to the challenge on a daily basis to make sure we deliver.

**What you'll have**:

- Demonstrated knowledge of the Fashion industry
- Proven track record of managing a P&L line for a business area
- Extensive stakeholder management at a senior level
- Experience in Buying and Merchandising.

The Partnership supports agile and flexible working practices, such as when, where and how we work. We have several different ways to work flexibly, including part-time, flexible or compressed hours, and job sharing. Head office areas also support a blended working approach. You'll have the opportunity to discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview and, where it is operationally practicable, they'll do all they can to accommodate your needs.

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