ASSOCIATE BUYER, /JEAN

rag & bone is currently looking for an Associate Buyer, /JEAN to join our Commercial team. This role will focus on identifying opportunities to continue to grow our well-established women’s denim, cut & sew, and woven’s business within our retail stores and e-commerce channel. Through in-depth analysis of the DTC business, the Associate Buyer is responsible for building style-level assortment plans & investments that protect product strategy, while achieving maximum sales volume and profitability for the /JEAN business.

Key Skillset 

• Analytical
• Ability to build bottoms up retail stores assortment plan
• Ability to create and utilize store clusters, targeting key strategies by door
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional partners in planning, merchandising, and wholesale
• Strong awareness women’s denim market and ability to capture trends at correct time with competitive analysis
• Strong understanding of rag & bone client

Responsibilities:

Business Reporting, Data & Analysis 

• Responsible for in depth hindsight analysis, drawing insights and providing clear communication to the merchandising team that articulates the go forward needs of Global Stores & Ecommerce
• Analyze weekly & historical sales performance to identify drivers of trends, misses, opportunities
• Consistent analysis of stores business; including understanding product performance, nuances of climate and location to identify sales opportunity and inform future store clusters and assortments
  • Communicate regularly with store managers to capture anecdotal feedback on product performance, competitive analysis and adjust store profiling
• Understand impact of promotional strategies and pricing on sales and margin forecasts
• Review OTB with planning partners to ensure overarching product strategy is meeting sales and receipt plans
• Ad-hoc reporting and analysis

Assortment Plans & Investments

• Responsible for developing the bottoms-up item level assortment for /JEAN category with oversight from Director of Buying
  • Partner closely with DTC planning to ensure class penetrations, sku counts, and door clusters/door tiers, are aligned with receipt target and product strategy
  • Determine style level investments utilizing key metrics (APS, FP ST%, weeks on floor)
• Determine capacity, class and product assortment strategies that optimize store & ecommerce productivity
  • Ensure productive product flow, taking into account core/continuous assortments and planned promotional activity
• Success will be determined by accurately measuring style level investments to drive sales and limit end of season liability
• Lead/manage the process to make sure key seasonal messaging and DTC investments are represented in visual merchandising, creative services (windows/mannequins) and marketing (in store + digital)

In-season Business Management

• In partnership with DTC Planning & Store Operations, maintain various in-season strategic & administrative tasks including but not limited to:
  • Initial product shipping flow, taking into account LY inventory and sales by week
  • Strategic replenishment into key items and clusters
  • Receipt logs
  • Bottoms up markdown projections
  • Markdown/RTV/Transfer maintenance
• Develop further understanding of the business through store visits and building close relationships with store managers
  • Disseminate product knowledge to stores

 Interpersonal Skills

• Develop strong partnership with Merchandising, DTC Planning, Store Managers, Wholesale Sales, and Production partners
• 3+ years in roles of increasing responsibility
• Experience working in a planning, buying or merchandising function
• Decision making capability clearly driven by developing strategic business initiatives through analytics
• Advanced Excel skills required
• Strong organizational skills and excellent communication skills with ability to influence, present and defend a business argument both one-on- one and in a group setting
• Strong analytical and creative problem-solving skills