Head of Buying - Men's Footwear

Company Overview

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world. JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally. We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Role Purpose

The Head of Buying reports to the Buying Director and is accountable for setting and leading the category buying strategy to deliver sustainable growth and profitability across a portfolio of categories/brands. The Head of Buying is accountable for strategic range direction, trading performance, team leadership, supplier strategy, and governance, ensuring the buying function delivers the right product at the right time, price and quantity across all channels.

Key Accountabilities

• Define and deliver the category/brand buying strategy aligned to the business plan.
• Own category vision, segmentation, range frameworks and multi-channel proposition (store, online, partner).
• Lead seasonal planning cycles, innovation roadmap, and long-term supplier strategy.
• Set trading cadence: weekly trade, forecasting, exception management and in-season actions.
• Establish governance for range sign-off and risk controls.
• Build strategic supplier partnerships (joint business plans, exclusives, cost roadmaps, marketing investment).
• Lead major negotiations: long-term terms, rebates, funding, volume commitments and strategic deals.
• Lead and develop a high-performing buying team (succession planning, capability frameworks, coaching).
• Set clear objectives and ways of working; role model strong decision making and accountability.
• Recruit, performance manage and build a culture of pace, curiosity and customer obsession.
• Partner with Merch/Planning leadership to own OTB strategy and inventory investment decisions.
• Align with Marketing, Creative, Digital, Retail Ops and Supply Chain to deliver go-to-market readiness.
• Present category performance, risks and opportunities to senior leadership with clear recommendations.
• Own customer insight loops: trend research, competitor benchmarking, customer feedback, analytics.
• Drive test-and-learn approaches (newness rate, capsule drops, exclusives, pricing experiments).
• Final sign-off (or recommendation authority) on range frameworks and key supplier choices.
• Ownership of category investment decisions (OTB strategy) within agreed budgets.
• Approves pricing architecture principles and markdown strategy for the category.
• Accountable for team structure and operating model within function.