Assistant Buyer - Brands

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

Your key accountabilities will include

• Create positive partnerships with M&S Womenswear 3rd Party 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 the set up and ongoing operation runs smoothly.
• Constantly monitor sales and range offering to ensure commercial and customer aspirations are potentialized liaising with brands to curate and amend accordingly.
• Accountable for ensuring critical paths are shared, up to date and complete and communicated to the wider teams.

Who you are

Your skills and experience will include

• Already working to at least Assistant Buyer level in a fast-paced retailer.
• Passion for womenswear is essential, experience working in womenswear is preferred, with a strong product affinity – understanding customer appeal and product and how this will complement the M&S brand is critical. Brand experience is not required.
• Strong relationship building and communication skills to foster collaborative and effective engagement with brand partners. Appreciation of internal cross functional departments and key interactions required to establish integrated processes and ease of working - being organised, ability to prioritise and work under pressure will be key to this role.
• Open to change and playing an important role in establishing the adoption of 3rd Party Brands within the complex and evolving M&S world
• Strong commercial acumen – understanding how price, margin and costs impact the Brand and M&S profitability. Ability to balance commercial, brand and customer needs with appreciation of impact on BUs.
• Understanding and awareness of the competitor landscape, how this evolves and the impact on our brand choices regarding new brand development.

Everyone’s welcome…

M&S is ready to push boundaries to lead the retail industry into a greener, speedier, more inspiring digital era. That’s why we’re revolutionising how we work and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. There’s never been a better time to be part of our team. Marks & Spencer aims to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make an immediate impact.

We are committed to an active Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Policy, which starts with our recruitment and selection process, and we are happy to talk flexible working.

If you consider yourself to require reasonable adjustments to any part of our recruitment process, we invite you to share those requirements with us when completing your application. We will make every effort to ensure your needs are met to provide a fair and transparent process of assessment