Head of Buying - Kid's and Women's Footwear

Reporting To – Buying Director

Role Purpose

To set and lead the category buying strategy and 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.

Cross-functional & Executive Stakeholder Management

• 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 category.
• Accountable for team structure and operating model within function.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Significant leadership experience in buying/trading within retail or multi-channel.
• Proven track record delivering category growth, margin improvement, and inventory efficiency at scale.
• Strong strategic thinking paired with high operational trading cadence.
• Executive-level stakeholder management and ability to influence business direction.
• Strong people leadership: building teams, developing capability, managing performance.

Desirable

• Experience leading multi-category portfolios or complex branded environments.
• International sourcing/negotiation exposure and strategic supplier management.
• Experience operating in high-volume, fast-paced retail with short lead times.
• Vision and strategic clarity.
• Commercial leadership and risk discipline.
• Inspiring people leadership.
• Decisive, accountable decision making.
• High-impact communication (exec storytelling).
• Collaborative leadership across functions.
• Customer obsession and trend awareness.