Menswear Buying Lead

What’s in it for you

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

As a Buying Lead for Menswear you will work with the Heads of Buying, Merchandising and Design to define and deliver the Menswear strategy, liaising with key stakeholders across the business. You will define category strategy and direction for area of responsibility, working in collaboration with the Buyers, Merchandisers and Designers to deliver. You will lead change and transformation within the BU and lead on agreed strategic projects end to end. This role is part of the Leadership Team, leading and building a high performing team and continuously raising the bar to deliver results

Your key accountabilities will include

• Lead and oversee the formulation of a robust, customer-orientated global business strategies for category area of responsibility, which delivers business goals. Ensure that 1yr/ 3yr strategy and financial plan are in place for category area of responsibility, and that action plans are defined to deliver them
• Play a key role in the wider BU Leadership Team, deputising on behalf of the Head Of (where needed). Build a strong team, ensuring we are set up to deliver key target and develop talent within the team, coaching and mentoring to enable succession planning. Manage poor performance and behaviours where necessary
• Work with the team on the definition and delivery of product strategies and be responsible and accountable for achieving commercial performance targets. Lead a trading culture across team, spotting opportunities, chasing into new products and ensuring that product failure is identified early and managed appropriately across all channels
• Execute across and in partnership with all channels including Retail, M&S.com and International
• Work closely with the teams to ensure an effective sourcing and supplier strategy for all departments, progressively seeking to ensure we deliver on our Plan A commitments. Drive forward the adoption of an enhanced critical path process, seeking to ensure Menswear is able to operate with agility in response to trends and customer demands

Who you are

The ideal candidate will already be an expert in the field of Buying with significant Menswear Buying experience with a major clothing retailer, including in a leadership position. You will have strong leadership skills with evidence of wider stakeholder management, e.g. influencing .com, marketing, press, etc.

• Passion for delivering world class product through multi-channel retailing. Strong style credentials and passionate about extending that to the wider team.
• Menswear expert. Multi-product experience required - footwear experience preferred
• In depth knowledge of cost price negotiations and global sourcing and ability to collaborate with colleagues in Global Sourcing Offices (where used) to develop the supply base
• In depth experience in building a comprehensive product range, including packaging
• Moves at pace and demands the team do the same
• Ability to work across multiple sourcing models (M&S designed, Supplier designed)
• Understanding of IT applications to optimise the critical path management and end to end system accountabilities for the Department

Everyone’s welcome
We are ambitious about the future of retail. We’re disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more
conscientious, inspiring digital era. We’re transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting
opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen. We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.
If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don’t hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process

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