Assistant Buyer, Non Clothing

Department: Menswear

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Head Office, Chelsea House

DescriptionThe Buying team at River Island play a key role in realising the commercial opportunities created by our unique designs across all of our channels. This is achieved though effective range planning, awareness of key commercial data and customer trends, excellent supplier relations and internal networks, and execution of the Buying Strategy to deliver sales and profit plans.  The Assistant Buyer supports the Buyer with trading, booking, fitting, range building, negotiation and supplier management, whilst ensuring the BAA team manages the critical path smoothly.  \nKey Accountabilities: \nSupport weekly trading reviews, updating and providing information to the Buying team as needed \nEnsure orders and invoices are accurately and efficiently processed by the BAAs, and new suppliers are onboarded \nEffective sample management, including labelling, working with suppliers (including Home Production where relevant), maintaining the development tracker and ensuring the correct samples are available to support meetings \nSupporting in fit meetings ensuring BAA has prepped accordingly and inputting in the session, deputising in fits where appropriate \nCo-ordinating labelling and ticketing to a high standard \nMonitor and review Critical Path, responding to escalations of risks to reduce delays, and maintaining as awareness of current lead times \nAssist Buyer with cost negotiations and range building \nThrough a strong knowledge of competitors, key market trends, customers and channels, produce comp shops with recommendations, identifying opportunity and raising to buyer \nBuild a foundational understanding of sustainability and how it impacts the Buying choices that are made \nBuild a foundational understanding of compliance considerations and impact to the critical path management \nSeek out and positively respond to opportunities to step up and present in trade and department meetings \nThrough a growing awareness of ethical trading practises, ensure that we partner well with our suppliers and behave in a consistently ethical way towards them \nManages the workload of the BAA with a thorough understanding of the BAA performance and escalating to Buyer where support is needed \nSets the direction and objectives for the BAA providing timely feedback and support to enable them to work to the best of their abilities \nWork cross functionally with Core Merchandising team for effective ways of working and collaboratively with other internal teams (Ecommerce, Wholesale, Visual Merchandising)   \n Key experience required: \nPrevious experience as an Assistant Buyer, or established Senior Buyer’s Admin Assistant is required \nExperience in an omni-channel business is highly desirable \n Job role competencies:\n\nVery good verbal and numerical reasoning skills \nIntermediate MS Office skills \nComputer literate and ability to learn new systems quickly  \nHighly organised and proactive, good prioritisation skills \nCollaborative, with strong communication and interpersonal skills \nVery good commercial and market awareness \nDisciplined and conscientious, results oriented \nResilient and adaptable with the ability to multitask  \nCurious, continuous learning mindset \nCoaching, mentoring mindset \nAbility to present own views and assert own views \nTakes initiative \nGood presentation skills \nA keen interest in Product and the River Island brand is a must \n

About UsWe’re a much-loved brand with an exciting future. Our Islanders are a diverse bunch of bright, talented people who love working together – and are proud of the work they do.  Progression here can take you in all kinds of directions. This is what a career at River Island is like. And this is where yours starts.

This role is based at our Head Office in West London.