Job Description
Here at The Edinburgh Woollen Mill we have a fantastic opportunity for a Product/Buying Director to based at our Head Office in Carlisle.
Relocation assistance available
The Edinburgh Woollen Mill is a retail business comprising of over 400 units, including High Street, Tourist & Destination sites, predominantly Fashion and Home.
Head Office
Our Head Office is located in Carlisle, Cumbria. Carlisle has a principal station on the West Coast main line from London Euston and sits on the M6 motorway. This location provides ready access to the major facilities expected of a city, combined with the possibility of living in one of the finest countryside areas in the UK.
Almost every conceivable type of outdoors and countryside activity is at hand. There are fishing rivers, hill walking areas and golf courses nearby and the Lake District is a short drive away.
High Street stores
We have mainstream high street stores selling ladies and menswear for the 45 plus customer. Outlets are located in a wide variety of market and provincial towns across the UK and Ireland
Tourist Shops and Visitor Centres
We have specialty tourist stores, where gift items and other products reflect the stores location. The outlets, which trade under an individual, often local, fascia, are in key tourist locations throughout the UK. Many stores are on busy tourist routes and benefit from coach visits where food service and exhibitions are all part of the attraction.
Destination Shopping
There are Destination Sites which contain all of the Company's concepts and other brands to increase their attractiveness as a retail destination. The sites trade under local, individual fascias such as Antartex Village, and Kernow Mill, Mackinnon Mills.
If you are passionate about the brand looking for a new challenge then Edinburgh Woollen Mill is the place for you!
The role
• Create, develop and deliver the total product strategy for all product categories.
• To work with the Merchandise Director to be responsible for the overall critical path, ensuring all projects and activities are delivered to schedule.
• Manage and maintain all product development tools, including margin report, tracker, cost breakdown and packs.
• Research current trends feeding back areas of opportunity and risk to the business.
• Lead the product life cycle, ensuring all teams deliver to timeline.
• To establish and maintain appropriate standards of quality, ensuring correct garment composition and construction.
• Drive the front end product development strategy and implementation cross functionally ensuring progress of sampling/fabric/pricing in line with dates required for progress and sign off meeting.
• Work with sourcing to develop a sound supply policy, striving for consistent best practice partnerships, Foresee future weaknesses and needs, suggesting possible solutions.
• Ensuring quality is not compromised through margin gain, and the target margin is maintained.
• Ensuring that developments meet brand integrity.
Customer
• Know the customer and how they distinguish from their competitors; use this information to drive the product evolution of the business strategy.
• Have strong customer orientation, with an in-depth understanding of the marketplace and the ability to translate knowledge of emerging trends to drive margin and profit.
Commercial
• Proactively drive awareness of competitor’s activities and initiatives
• Strategic ability to look beyond current process and help define and implement more efficient and effective ways of working going forward.
• Manager the negotiation process to ensure agreed target margins are achieved or exceeded.
Key Skills
• Have extensive experience in leading design, sourcing, development, buying and technical teams with a thorough understanding of all departments.
• Have a credible background in Buying across womenswear and menswear.
• Have a vision for the business.
• Equally commercial and creative
• Will have an excellent eye for product.
• Will possess excellent product knowledge with proven experience in conceiving product concepts that drive business.
• Will be an excellent communicator, highly collaborative
• Will have a hands-on approach.
• Will have effective and proven negotiation and networking skills at all levels, both internally and externally with an ability to work with multiple stakeholders.
• Will be results oriented and target focused when accomplishing a task or project; demonstrates the ability to manage and enable the process of change.
Leadership
• Successfully lead the buying, design, sourcing and technical teams to build and deliver the product ranges.
• Together with the Directors, define and communicate clear vision of the future, translating this into understandable goals and targets.
• Build strong teams with a focus on succession planning.
• Develop, coach and support the growth of the buying, design, sourcing and technical teams, to deliver their agreed targets and ensuring the teams are aware of the bigger picture.
• Will be very people focused, with the ability to build relationships quickly to gain support and drive and facilitate cross-functional teams.