Lead Production Merchandiser (Maternity Cover - 12 Month FTC) in Cheltenham

The Role

You will lead the UK Central Purchasing team, overseeing and enabling accurate buy placements and on-time deliveries aligned with the company’s strategic objectives.

This role is ideal for an experienced production professional from the apparel industry, with a deep understanding of critical path management. You should have proven experience in negotiating with overseas suppliers, along with strong communication skills and the ability to challenge lead times constructively.

This role is full time hours per week, but we will consider candidates who are looking for part time hours.

You Will

• Lead and manage a team to ensure all lead times and ex-factory dates are reviewed, challenged, and negotiated where necessary.
• Oversee a global supply network, building and maintaining strong relationships with key partners.
• Take full accountability for your team’s timely and efficient execution of tasks, ensuring adherence to the buying calendar and alignment across global sourcing offices.
• Proactively manage factory performance to meet order specifications and delivery timelines through accurate critical path management and supplier communications.
• Work closely with the planning team to monitor supplier orders in line with capacity plans to ensure production caps are not breached.
• Be able to create and lead supplier action plans to support the recovery of delays and ensure minimal impact to the intake schedule.
• Handle supplier delays autonomously, including negotiating penalties where appropriate and escalating key intake risks to senior management with proactive solutions.
• Ratio orders at size level when required to meet specific order requirements and optimise stock flow.
• Monitor team performance through clear KPIs and ensure appropriate supplier actions are taken to maintain delivery standards.
• Lead the weekly buy process, driving agility by challenging repeat lead times and working closely with Sourcing and Quality teams to resolve outstanding actions.
• Support the business in managing supplier contracts, including payment terms, debits, and discounts.
• Support the Head of Purchasing and Head of Sourcing in delivering key sourcing and planning strategies and proactively lead cross-functional projects to drive operational excellence and system optimisation.
• Ensure adherence to buying calendar deadlines through strong stakeholder engagement.
• Foster strong relationships with internal departments, serving as a dependable and collaborative team member.
• Identify and implement opportunities for process improvements and system enhancements.
• Manage and develop others, provide leadership to direct reports, ensuring delivery of team priorities and supporting their professional growth.
• Support continuous improvement by contributing to wider business projects and initiatives, adapting quickly to support the needs of a fast-paced, evolving environment.

You Are

• Ideally Degree Educated, preferably in Fashion or Supply Chain.
• Ideally someone with a minimum of 6 years industry experience – retail/brand or supplier
• Experienced in production processes within the fashion sector
• Knowledgeable in the fashion buying cycle and critical path
• Experienced working with a global supply base across multi-categories
• Previously experienced in leading others to success
• Advanced in Excel with the ability to analyse and manipulate data to provide clear reporting updates
• Confident working with high volumes of data
• Highly accurate with good attention to detail
• An excellent communicator with an enthusiastic and engaging manner
• Proactive in your approach to resolving issues in a timely and effective manner
• Highly organized with the ability to prioritise workload effectively
• Self-motivated with a willingness to learn new skills and demonstrate a can-do approach
• Experienced in the use of PLM / Siv or Looker would be desirable

Working for Superdry has never been so rewarding…

• 25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, we also offer a holiday buying scheme
• An additional day off to celebrate your Birthday
• Family is massively important to us, so we have a broad range of family-friendly working policies in place, including enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
• Company Pension scheme
• All employees are covered by our Life Assurance policy whilst working at Superdry. We feel it’s important to offer protection for your family and loved ones in such a situation and to support this we offer life assurance cover which pays a lump sum equivalent either twice or four times your annual salary
• A big staff discount – naturally. Because we know that you love to wear Superdry, you’ll benefit from a 50% discount in store and online
• Our Head Office is home to our very own store for staff only where you can treat yourself to heavily discounted sample stock
• A health cash plan is open to all employees.
• Flexible working and core working hours between 10am – 4pm to help you achieve that all-important work-life balance
• Access to onsite parking and as part of our sustainable development goals, we have a selection of electrical car parking points freely available to staff.
• A range of learning and development materials to help you in your career and grow with us
• We like to give back, so we allow our employees time off for volunteering work
• A global employee assistance plan in place that you can access anytime you want - it’s free and confidential
• You’ll also have access to a Cycle To Work Scheme
• A range of local discounts with businesses across Gloucestershire

At Superdry, everyone has a voice andwe want to hear it. We create environments where individuality can flourish and is celebrated as part of who we are as a brand. We’re incredibly proud that over 90% of our people feel strongly that they can be themselves at work.

We want to meet people with varied backgrounds because we understand that diversity of thought encourages new ideas to thrive, fuelling creativity and enabling us to do better work. We want to build a team which represents a variety of backgrounds, styles, perspectives, and skills; we hire people based on their merit and potential.

We also welcome conversations about flexible working for all roles at Superdry and will always accommodate it where possible.

Who we are

Superdry is a British, founder-led brand with a truly global presence. We’ve been proudly creating world-class product for almost two decades, offering genuine choice to our customers with our curated style collections.

Our mission is to be the No. 1 sustainable style destination, delivering product that is authentic with unmatched quality and true integrity, much like our people.

We are on an ambitious journey to serve our diverse community through a premium brand that’s focused on the future, prioritises sustainability, leads with craft, and celebrating culture. We need talented people to join us on the adventure, is this you?