Senior Buyer | Cult Beauty in London

About THG

We are THG, a global ecommerce group on a mission to be the global online leader in beauty and sports nutrition. Our portfolio of leading retailers and brands such as LOOKFANTASTIC, Myprotein, ESPA, Perricone MD, and Cult Beauty form our two core businesses: THG Beauty and THG Nutrition. From Manchester to New York, we’re powered by a team of over 2500 people who work together, lead by example, and think BIG.

Life at THG Beauty

We know that beauty isn’t one-size-fits-all. Our portfolio of leading retailers and iconic beauty brands caters to everyone, everywhere, empowering customers all over the world to look and feel fantastic. By combining our portfolio of owned brands with a marketplace for over 1,300 third-party beauty brands through online retail sites LOOKFANTASTIC, Cult Beauty, and Dermstore, THG Beauty’s ambition is to be the global digital partner of choice across the beauty industry, supporting the channel shift to online.

THG Beauty’s breadth of relationships is unique to the beauty market; it engages with brands as a retailer, a brand owner, and a product developer and manufacturer, making it the industry’s digital strategic leader.

Cult Beauty

Who is Cult Beauty? We’re a beauty-obsessed team who share a common goal - to become the most trusted beauty retailer in the world! We’re all about intelligent beauty, from the way we pick our ever-lusted-after brands to how we talk to our exceptionally savvy customers. Our Cult Community values transparency and so do we. That’s why we only sell the products that truly blow us away and publish every review on our site. To achieve this goal, we want to collaborate with individuals who have the same vision. As part of the Cult Beauty team, you’ll be encouraged to share ideas and empowered to aim for the skies. We’re a team so if we fail, we fail together and try again. Cult Beauty has become the successful world leader it is because of our people. We’re a close-knit family that recognises that our collective and community are much more valuable than the sum of their parts. We’re not just here to sell the most unbelievably amazing beauty products in the world, we also want to challenge the definition of what ‘beauty’ is and use our platform to challenge the status quo - both in our industry and society.

The Senior Buyer is responsible for leading on the product strategy for their brands and categories whilst delivering continued sales & profit growth. They will build strength in relationships with each partner, ensuring that our customers are at the heart of every decision made within the buying team.

Responsibilities

• Strategy Development: Collaborates with the Buying Director and other key stakeholders to plan, build and execute category strategies for sustainable growth and development of the business. Conducts strategy meetings with key accounts with plans to deliver. Supports management of the buying department, showcasing leadership to deliver all key business objectives. Keeps up to date with industry/market trends and networking opportunities to help further build brand plans & relationships.
• Brand Planning: Leading and developing brand relationships in line with company values to build a best in market joint business plan and achieve business benefits including market leading promotions, first to market launches, exclusives and investment into promotional & marketing support to maximise performance. Leveraging existing brand relationships to grow new business opportunities with a view to raise Cult Beauty’s profile within the industry. Responsible for leading supplier negotiations to maximise margin/profit. Responsible for building, managing and delivering the buying budgets, providing a clear and structured rationale for how each budget is to be achieved given the agreed upon JBP and marketing exposure. Collaborating with all functions in the business to build an exciting and innovative calendar that launches new brands, promotions and events, ensuring the message is clear and concise across all channels. Partnering with the Merchandising team to accurately forecast business revenue and ensure optimum availability levels to deliver budget, reacting to international trading patterns as required. Forms & nurtures strategic brand relationships, building strength in relationships with all key brand partners to leverage investment opportunities, terms discussions and global networks. Continuous monitoring and review of business performance to analyse sales patterns, advises teams and ensures appropriate action is taken to unforeseen sales reactions. Overseas bi-annual strategy meetings with brands/team, devising clear agendas, objectives and working cross functionally beforehand to gather relevant information to prepare a presentation that crafts a meaningful story for each brand meeting and enables a best in class JBP. Monitors satisfaction with all brand partners to ensure best in class delivery.
• Reporting: Takes responsibility for demand planning by brand alongside merch team to ensure every brand always has the stock needed to maximise budget performance. Develop and manage newness strategy - supports the team to negotiate the right product and brand mix that underlines the Cult Beauty USP, reacting with agility to market trends and always staying one step ahead of our competitors, creating an unparalleled customer experience and maximising sales and profit to achieve KPI’s. Manages brand P&L with a clear understanding/ownership of stock in trade, open to buy, aged and overstocks, territory participation, promotional funding, retro agreements and trading margin. Overseas business performance reporting to the wider business where needed. Uses commercial insights, trends and customer behaviours to create and adapt plans that both capitalise on opportunities and mitigate against potential risks. Considers the influence of macroeconomic trends.
• Team Development: Develops skills of the team - identifies individual training needs as well as encourages effective teamwork, KPI’s setting and communicating clear goals/targets. Motivates team - gives recognition and praise, goal setting, implementing incentives to drive performance within the team. Provides support to new team members - ensures a full induction is provided and support during the learning process. Leadership of the department - guiding on priorities, influencing, engaging and inspiring the team. Is a role model for providing a clear strategic direction for their team.

KPIs

• Responsibility for building strength in key strategic brand relationships while delivering sales & profit growth.
• Brands Sales Growth Target(s): achieving sales growth in line if not above of budget.
• Brands Gross Margin Target(s): achieving sales growth at maintained margin.
• Securing commercial terms improvement across margin, payment terms, marketing investment and purchasing retro’s where applicable.
• Delivery of a complete JBP that is built to deliver continuous sales growth to outperform previous year’s performance.
• Team and business leadership / mentoring / goal setting.

Skills and Experience

Essential skills:

• Prioritise, structure work & effectively manage time.
• Financial and analytical ability - ability to budget and review performance.
• Excellent communicator - able to give clarity and set direction.
• Commercial awareness of the beauty industry.
• Strong knowledge of your brand partners.
• Ability to form good working relationships with internal teams and external clients.
• Proactive and innovative.
• Critical thinker and problem-solving skills.
• Project management skills.
• Leadership.
• Negotiation skills.

What’s in it for me?

Career Development: Access bespoke development programmes that have been designed and developed by our in-house L&D team. Continued development through our upskilling programme that is delivered in partnership with an industry-leading training provider.

Enhanced Leave: 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays. Don’t want to work on your birthday? We don’t either! Enjoy your day off on us! Enhanced maternity and paternity pay, depending on length of service. Up to 10 days compassionate leave. Buy back up to 3 days each year. Unlock 2 days volunteer leave after 12 months.

Wellbeing Support: Access face-to-face and virtual appointments with our in-house GP. Access our 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) which is provided by Bupa.

Other Perks: Save up to 12% on the cost of personal tech through our salary sacrifice scheme. Up to 50% staff discount on THG brands. Know someone who would be perfect for THG? Refer them and get up to £1000 when they pass their probation. Anniversary gifts when you hit 5 and 10 years of service.

THG is proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. If you are invited to interview, please let us know if there are any reasonable adjustments we can make to the recruitment process that will enable you to perform to the best of your ability. THG is committed to creating a diverse & inclusive environment and hence welcomes applications from all sections of the community. Because of the high volumes of applications our opportunities attract, it sometimes takes us time to review and consider them all. We endeavour to respond to every application we receive within 14 days. If you haven’t heard from us within that time frame or should you have any specific questions about this or other applications for positions at THG please contact one of our Talent team to discuss further.