Kipling Assistant Buyer, Retail (10-Month Contract)
VF Corporation
- Jersey City, NJ
- Permanent
- Full-time
- Support the Buying team to ensure seasonal strategies and in season business is executed in order to achieve financial targets.
- Focus on the Full Price channel, learning and managing the day to day buying responsibilities, including reporting & analysis, assortment tools and sku counts, and seasonal hindsighting .
- Conduct weekly sales analysis and make recommendations for pricing, promotions, and inventory optimization.
- Manage receipt reconciliation, create purchase orders, maintain sku definitions, and organize samples.
- Work closely with cross-functional partners to ensure a seamless execution of floor sets.
- Immerse yourself in the brand, products, and store environment.
- Collaborate with Merchandising, Visual, and Marketing to bring the seasonal assortment to life in store.
- Quickly learn about our tools and our process (AS400, Excel, etc.).
- Partner with Planning on sales and model stock forecasting trends.
- Get to know our customer and our store teams.
- Consistently meets deadlines with excellent communication skills.
- Constant learning and adjusting to consumer demand and market trends.
- High accuracy and efficient time management skills to manage product lifecycle.
- Achieve financial targets including sales, inventory and profit objectives.
- 4-year Bachelor degree preferred
- 1-3 years of related industry experience preferred
- Foundational knowledge of retail math
- Self Starter – must manage up, be action oriented and self sufficient
- Team player- no task is too big or too small on our growing team
- Detail driven with strong analytical skills
- Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel is required, Power BI a plus
- Comfortable juggling and coordinating multiple projects with competing priorities
- Manage day-to-day business of the Buying Team and manage product lifecycle of each sku from adoption to complete sell through that will include creating sku and purchase orders in AS400, key promotional changes, and organizing samples .
- Run weekly, monthly, and quarterly selling reports and assist in recapping and analyzing Full Price Store’s business, making promotion recommendations to improve in season performance and identifying product opportunities and wins.
- Build and maintain seasonal assortment tools and sku counts as well as partner with the Buyer in creating a consumer centric assortment for Full Price stores that will meet financial targets with the potential to manage buys independently over time.
- Maximize sales and inventory turn by coordinating with Planning and Allocations teams on consolidations and model stock levels to drive continuous positive results.
- Influence category assortments by analyzing product performance, customer feedback/data, and consumer trends by market/region and sharing with global merchandising and design team.
- Effectively communicate the seasonal message and big ideas to marketing and visual partners to ensure product tells a compelling message in store with signage and windows to support.
- Work closely with Visual Partners to support timely execution of each floorset.
- Provide seasonal teaching tools to store managers to facilitate high level of product knowledge allowing for successful selling.
- Monday style and store selling and midweek style selling.
- Update Selling file weekly.
- Work closely with Buyer to write a business recap for our business weekly deck.
- Ensure NOS skus are at optimal inventory levels.
- Promo change
- Creation of MD chart
- Communication write up for the Klubhouse
- Enter markdowns into IP
- Update promo calendar
- Update database
- Floorsets
- Ensure samples are pulled for seasonal kick off meeting with visual
- Provide ongoing product and seasonal assortment to visual team
- Discuss big ideas with team and items to feature
- APS file is passed to Allocation (at the beginning of each season)
- Inventory management
- Transfers to/from ecom/outlet/wholesale as needed
- Manage Sku Lifecycle
- AS400 POS system – Create sku, create PO, key in promotions (include fixing price discrepancies by store).
- Maintain Style Master Data/Database in excel.
- Organize sample closet
- Seasonal buys – update sku framework and maintain Lineplanner (assortment tool)
- Seasonal big ideas kick off for marketing and visual team
- Seasonal creative requests
- Signage
- Product knowledge
- Seasonal hindsights
- Data pull + pivot/compare chart building
- Best and worst deck
- Sample pulling
- Monthly leadership calls—deck
- Flip database to represent current season