Job Title: Head of Merchandising
Department: BMDQ
Reports To: CEO
Direct Reports: Merchandisers
About You
As Head of Merchandising, you are the strategic lead for all merchandising activity at My 1st Years. You will own the overall stock, sales and profit plan for the brand, setting the direction for your team and driving performance across all channels: ecommerce, marketplaces, and wholesale. You will be a commercially minded, data-driven leader who thrives in a fast-paced environment and can balance big-picture thinking with hands-on trading decisions.
Working closely with the CEO and the wider BMDQ team, you will be responsible for building and evolving a best-in-class merchandising function — one that underpins the commercial success of the business and supports its continued growth.
Main Duties and Responsibilities
Strategy & Planning
- Own the brand-level stock, sales and profit plan, setting seasonal budgets and OTB in alignment with SLT (finance, data & customer).
- Lead the development of the annual and seasonal merchandising strategy, ensuring it supports the brand's growth ambitions across all channels.
- Work with the BMDQ team to shape the overall product and commercial strategy, bringing a clear merchandising perspective to all key decisions.
- Define and implement range architecture frameworks and price architecture standards across hardlines and softlines.
- Develop and oversee the merchandising strategy for international websites, ensuring range, pricing and OTB are appropriately planned by market and reflect local demand, seasonality and commercial opportunity.
Trading & Performance
- Take overall ownership of brand KPIs including revenue, margin, markdown, stock cover, SKU availability, ASP and AOV — ensuring targets are met.
- Lead weekly and monthly trade meetings, providing clear performance analysis, decisive recommendations and follow-through on actions.
- Oversee the monthly re-forecasting of brand and category WSSIs, presenting updates and recommendations to Finance.
- Drive in-season trading decisions across ecommerce, international websites, marketplaces and wholesale, reacting quickly to performance trends.
- Monitor trading performance by international market, identifying opportunities and risks and making timely interventions — accounting for currency, local seasonality and market-specific demand patterns.
- Oversee the promotional and markdown planning process, ensuring the right interventions are made at the right time to protect margin and clear stock efficiently.
Team Leadership
- Lead, develop and inspire the merchandising team, creating a high-performance culture with clear goals, accountability and development pathways.
- Set clear objectives for the Merchandisers and wider team, providing regular coaching and feedback to drive individual and team growth.
- Build the capability of the merchandising function over time, ensuring the team has the skills, tools and processes needed to scale with the business.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work in close partnership with Buying, Design, Marketing, Trading and Ecommerce to ensure a joined-up approach to range building, launches and promotions.
- Collaborate with the Warehouse and Operations teams to support efficient stock management and product onboarding.
- Build strong relationships with external suppliers and third-party partners where relevant to merchandising planning and execution.
- Partner with Marketing, Ecommerce & international general managers on international site trading, including localised promotional calendars, market-specific product launches and regional pricing strategies.
Process & Systems
- Utilising AI, drive continuous improvement across merchandising processes, ways of working and tooling to improve efficiency and decision-making speed.
- Ensure merchandising data, reporting and forecasting frameworks are robust, accurate and scalable.
- Champion best practice across the team, maintaining high standards in data integrity, critical path management and internal system use.
- Support the CEO and wider business with ad hoc commercial projects and brand initiatives as required.
Skills and Knowledge
- Significant experience in a senior merchandising role, ideally within a fast-growing ecommerce or direct-to-consumer brand.
- Proven track record of owning and delivering a brand-level P&L, with experience managing budgets of meaningful scale.
- Deep commercial acumen — highly numerate, analytically rigorous, and able to translate data into clear, confident decisions.
- Strong experience across multiple channels including ecommerce, international websites, marketplaces and wholesale.
- Experience trading across international or multi-market ecommerce sites, with a solid understanding of the commercial nuances involved — including localised pricing, currency, fulfilment differences and varying seasonal demand.
- Excellent leadership and people management skills, with the ability to build, motivate and develop a high-performing team.
- Outstanding communication and presentation skills — equally comfortable presenting to the CEO and collaborating with junior team members.
- Advanced Excel skills; experience with trading or merchandising tools and BI platforms is a plus.
- Highly organised with the ability to manage competing priorities.
- A natural collaborator who builds trust quickly and brings people together around a common goal.
Location
Hybrid — 2 to 3 days in office per week.
Benefits
- 25 days holiday (increasing to 28 with service) + Bank Holidays
- Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Pay
- Summer Hours (3pm finish every Friday in June, July & August)
- 2 Volunteer Days per year
- Birthday Day off (in addition to your holiday allowance)
- Early finish on payday
- Staff Discount
- Free onsite parking