ASSISTANT MERCHANDISER
THE OUTNET is the most fashionable fashion outlet. Since its launch in April 2009 by the people behind the award-winning website NET-A-PORTER, THE OUTNET has quickly established itself as the chic, go-to destination for the global, style-conscious shopper looking for the best designer brands at a great discount price.
As such, we are seeking a talented Assistant Merchandiser to maximise and capture global sales through strategic analysis, effective stock management and executing strategic activities in a growing and dynamic business. Ultimately ensuring that we are first in making the latest trends and best designs available to our customers – where ever they are!
The Role:
With guidance from the Merchandiser, key responsibilities would be:
Trading:
- Develop understanding of key performance indicators, relating to sales, stock, profit and markdown, against budget and last year.
- Understand the importance of both intake and selling margin and support the merchandiser and buyer with making decisions to achieve targets.
- Update and analyse weekly reports and propose actions to Merchandiser to minimise risks and maximise opportunities.
- Work alongside merchandiser and buying team to plan and trade relevant brands.
- Identify and analyse best-selling and under-performing brands and recommend actions to take.
- Work with Product Merchandising and buying teams to improve seasonal performance and drive existing sales.
- Plan brand upload sizes and forecast sell through targets as well as analyse resulting sales performance.
- Review weekly sales analysis and present back findings in Monday trade meetings as well as follow through with further actions.
- Undertake adhoc and self-driven analysis as required by the department to support trade.
- Reviewing KPIS when undertaking PO sign offs to ensure business and brand goals are met.
Intake:
- Managing the MA who will have ownership of intake delivery KPI’s into the business for a relevant department.
- Overseeing the MA directly working with internal Operational teams to ensure stock delivery targets and inbound SLAs are met.
Planning and Forecasting:
- Take ownership of relevant Brand WSSIS, analyse and make strategic suggestions to Merchandiser.
- Use analysis to plan by brand for key trading periods to ensure optimum intake values are plotted by revenue type to ensure sales plans can be achieved.
- With Merchandisers support complete quarterly planning forecasts driven from historic analysis and strategic vision for brands.
- Support merchandiser with strategic planning for both Strategy and Hindsight.
- Produce category buy plans, identifying key trends and working with buying to ensure these are suitable for the ranges they will be buying from.
- Assist Merchandiser with setting up and management of department WSSIs.
- Assist Merchandiser with planning and execution of promotions and clearance.
Essential Skills & Requirements
In order to be successful in this role you’ll need a combination of analytical skills, passion, commercial knowledge, great communication and organisational skills. An analytical or business related degree is also desirable due to the numerical and statistical requirements of the role.
- Degree educated (or equivalent)
- Significant commercial experienced gained in a fashion retail merchandising environment (ideally luxury within an own-brand or multi-brand environment)
- Numerate with strong analytical and computer literacy.
- Advanced Excel knowledge essential.
- Commercial Awareness – working to develop full understanding of the nature of our business, products and competitive market in order to drive the best performance.
- Team player – build relationships with other internal and external teams and functions for personal and business development.
- Strong eye for detail and organisational skills and strives for a high level of accuracy.
- Proactive, self-driven and able to work with stringent deadlines.
- Excellent work ethic and ability to multi-task.
- Professional, positive attitude with excellent communication skills.