Senior Buyer (Laundry/Dishwashers)
London
Currys London Campus at Waterloo
Fixed Term Contract
Full Time
Grade 5
At Currys we’re united by one passion: to help everyone enjoy amazing technology. As the UK’s best-known retailer of tech, we’re proud of the service our customers receive – and it’s all down to our team of 25,000 caring and committed colleagues. Working as one team, we learn and grow together, celebrating the big and small moments that make every day amazing.
Positioned within the Appliances commercial team, you will be right in the centre of a fast‑paced team, working hand in hand with the go to market team, building strong relationships with our supplier partners. As a senior category buyer for Laundry, you need to have extensive buying and management experience as you will be responsible for high turnover, complex categories leading a team of direct reports.
You will be responsible for setting the category strategy and selecting and negotiating product ranges to meet customer needs and company KPIs. You will negotiate annual supplier terms, and investments in our business and its activity. You are accountable for ensuring cost pricing allows us to remain competitive for customers while maximising EBIT return and securing differentiation against competitors.
You will need to have great relationship building skills, working closely with our supplier partners, the go to market team, Planning and Far East Sourcing team and use your influencing skills to secure support to drive the business forward.
Commercial acumen is a must as you will be required to support our analysis of trading performance, providing recommendations of actions to drive our business. Our ideal candidate will be organised and self‑motivated in order to prioritise their work whilst having strong attention to detail to ensure everything is right first time.
Role overview
As part of this role, you’ll be responsible for:
* Managing all category supplier relationships in line with our overall commercial supplier strategy and the category strategy
* Build credible relationships with our suppliers and develop a sourcing strategy to both bring customers the best ranges, supported with availability but also to minimise our NET cost of goods
* Working with suppliers to develop a strong understanding of the future technology roadmap, enabling the category to adequately plan ahead for likely changes in customer trends and demand
* Negotiating product ranges – cost pricing, additional terms, exclusivity, distribution, stock availability
* Negotiating additional fixed and variable financial terms related to ranging, activity and performance – maximising EBIT across the category
* Negotiating promotional funding support to drive sales while maintaining margin in line with financial objectives
* Securing adequate product and promotional differentiation from competitors to support market share growth objectives
* Pricing the product range in line with agreed category CPI targets
* Working with merchandising to ensure that we are forecasting at the right level to maximise sales and stock turn.
* Working with the head of merchandising and central finance teams, ensuring the claiming and tracking of income against trading account targets, ensuring all due supplier funding is claimed on time in line with contractual obligations
* Providing regular reviews of team members’ objectives, priorities and performance via Personal Development Review and one‑to‑ones, supporting their professional and personal development, ensuring that the right talent plans are in place to support the talent pipeline for the business.
You will need:
* Substantial buying experience working within a FMCG/Fashion or Hard Goods fast paced retailer
* Strong negotiation skills and ability to manage all supplier partnerships at differing levels of seniority
* Good judgment and strong decision‑making skills to enable the right actions for the category
* Excellent numerical and analytical skills to review data and provide recommendations/actions plans to drive sales, profit and cash
* Excellent inter‑personal and communication skills, capable of presenting to senior stakeholders as well as working cross‑functionally to achieve the desired results
* Customer champion with excellent commercial awareness and understanding of customer needs
* Good working knowledge of SharePoint, Teams, Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Experience working with Claude is an advantage
* Management/leadership experience of more than 1 direct report
Benefits:
* Holiday benefits - 25 days of annual leave (plus bank holiday entitlement)
* Private medical insurance
* Life Assurance
* Access to discretionary bonus
* Hybrid working; our primary Currys Campus is at Waterloo (WeWork)
Every voice has a space at our table and we're committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. We want to make sure you have a fair opportunity to show us your talents during our application process.
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