About Us
Skin Cupid is a leading Asian beauty retailer and distributor dedicated to bringing the best of Asian beauty to our global community. We believe in empowering our customers with knowledge and choices, making it easy and enjoyable to find products that suit their skin needs and preferences. Today we operate across direct-to-consumer, wholesale and offline retail, and we work directly with brand partners to bring products into the UK and EU market. Joining our team means being part of a dynamic, fast-growing environment that celebrates cross-border beauty and wellness.
About the Role
Becoming our Buyer means you are a key decision-maker in what Skin Cupid curates, building long-lasting relationships with our brand partners. You will look after a group of categories from start to finish: finding the brands, choosing the range, agreeing the terms, and then watching how it all trades once it is live. This role is perfect for someone who wants real ownership of the buying lifecycle and to make an impact.
Key Responsibilities
- Category Plans: Build and deliver the plan for your categories, covering range, pricing, promotions and stock, so that it supports our wider commercial strategy and hits its sales and margin targets.
- Range Building: Decide what we stock, balancing hero products, reliable core lines and newer things worth testing.
- Brand Discovery: Find and onboard new brands through market research, trade shows, sourcing trips and your network, so that we keep bringing products to the UK first.
- Category Expertise: Stay close to the trends, innovation and what is coming next in beauty, and use that to sharpen the decisions you make.
- Brand Partnerships: Build and own the relationships with our brand partners, ensuring speedy communication across channels.
- Negotiating: Lead commercial conversations from first pitch through to signed terms.
- Promotions: Decide how your categories are promoted and discounted, review honestly how each promotion performed, and share what you learn with the rest of the team.
- Commercial Performance: Own the forecasts, budgets and margin for your categories, watch how things are trading, and act early when something is over- or under-performing.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Working with internal teams such as merchandising, operations, account managers and marketing on brand launches, lead times, promotions and channel expansion.
- Developing the Team: Support and mentor members of the buying team.
- Compliance: Make sure new brands and products are onboarded in line with UK and EU cosmetics regulations.
What We Are Looking For
We care as much about how you work as what is on your CV.
- You love the product. You are passionate about Asian beauty, you follow what is happening in the category, and you have opinions about where the market is heading.
- You are comfortable with the commercials. Margin, sell-through and terms are second nature.
- You excel in negotiation. You have led and closed commercial conversations with suppliers.
- You’re a go-getter. You bring ideas forward, you flag problems early, and you like having the space to run with something.
- You want to grow. You are looking for more responsibility over time, and for a place where your work is visible.
- You are quick to reprioritise. Several categories and launches could be running at once. You keep a clear head about what matters most this week, and you adjust without losing track of the rest.
- Experience and language skills. Korean, Japanese and/or Chinese language skills are a bonus but not a requirement. Experience working with international suppliers across time zones is an advantage.
We are looking for at least 3-5 years in buying, at Buyer or strong Senior Assistant Buyer level. Beauty experience is ideal, but we are open to other fast-moving retail categories.
All candidates must be eligible to work in the United Kingdom.
Benefits
- Pension contribution
- Employee discounts
- Korean, Chinese and Japanese beauty products to try and take home
- Trying out new products before they come on the market
- Gym access
- Attending company events and dinners
- Office snacks