Assistant Manager - Buying Furniture_Buying_Buying Furniture Concept.Home Centre.UAE_JAFZA_Home ...

Assistant Manager - Buying Furniture_Buying_Buying Furniture Concept.Home Centre.UAE_JAFZA_Home Centre

United Arab Emirates

Job Description

Develop strategic buying plans for the assigned department/category. Ensure smooth buying operations through vendor identification, evaluation, and selection, in compliance with the contract principles to achieve the strategic and financial objectives of the concept

Responsibilities

• Market Research & Product Development: Conduct market visits for R&D within territories and secure the required information for competition benchmarking in a defined format.
• Conduct competition benchmarking across all territories for all the defined UDAs and identify "So What" for each UDA.
• Attend Trade fairs in order to assess trends and be abreast with the current market scenario.
• Conduct customer home visits or stores to secure Customer / Retail feedback and incorporate revisions in the assortment accordingly.
• Identify new products of international retailers through online research in order to assess trends and be abreast with the current market scenario.
• Ensure that the product development / sourcing process is as quick and efficient as possible, in order to ensure extremely fast time to market.
• Prepare and maintain newness tracker for respective category.
• Ensure newness is reviewed and ordered on time.
• Ensure all columns in the Product Launch Pack (PLP) are filled correctly for all new products especially features and benefits to customer.
• Category Management, Growth & Profitability: Prepare data for UDA analysis and conduct initial level of checking to ensure no data entry gaps.
• Prepare price ladder for key UDAs across all territories.
• Support senior category management to prepare assortment and pricing architecture by analyzing UDAs, competition benchmarks and price ladders.
• Prepare parts of assortment presentation together with other team members.
• Identify and react quickly to trends in the business to maximize sales, test emerging trends for selling viability.
• Analyze weekly and monthly sales, margins and inventory with the goal of optimizing sales and minimizing markdowns.
• Liaise with cross functional teams - VM, Marketing, eCom, L&D and Retail teams to develop strong story lines for digital marketing as well as in store experience delivering omni channel synergies.
• Conduct Product by Product (PBP) analysis along with Planning to ascertain monthly buys as per spend plan.
• Ensure management and ordering of Good Loose Components.
• Take timely action on current / potential aged items to ensure the ageing stock remains within the defined target.
• Work directly with the supplier to ensure that the products are perfectly chosen, engineered, and manufactured to ensure the best possible cost price, retail price and margin, following company policy and targets.
• Own sourcing KPIs for key categories, especially product margin & quality KPIs.
• Maintain strategic relationships with suppliers across continents, including negotiations and building optimal supply chain set ups.
• Identify new suppliers and provide documents and assistance to register them in the vendor database.
• Co ordinate with suppliers to secure samples.

Job Specifications

• Ability to thrive in a high growth, entrepreneurial and ambiguous environment.
• Strong analytical, commercial, and problem solving skills, with a "hands on" attitude and a focus on fast execution.
• Good sense for trends, creativity and a thorough understanding of customer needs.
• Strong communication skills and ability to clearly communicate with different stakeholders.
• Ability to prioritize tasks and to balance immediate and long term needs of the business while retaining agility to pivot as needed.
• Ability to recognize a new trend, item, look, technique, early in its life cycle and deliver quickly.

Qualifications

Post graduate or Graduate, 4+ years of product development and sourcing experience, for furniture and home furnishing products preferred.

About Us

Our journey started in 1973 with a single store in Bahrain. Since then, we have grown into a global retail and hospitality group. The proud creator of 25 plus value led, own built brands across retail, hospitality, food, and leisure.

Over the years, our UAE based group has evolved into a comprehensive retail and hospitality entity, with over 2200 retail stores, leisure, and hospitality outlets, panning the GCC, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Today, Landmark Group is one of GCC's largest omnichannel retailers and India's top home and fashion retailer.

We take immense pride in the organic growth of our retail brands, which have blossomed into household names. From Max, Splash, Babyshop, Centrepoint, Shoemart, Homecentre, Emax, Fitness First, to Funcity, to name a few, our brands span across a multitude of categories, enriching the lives of countless families over the past decade.

About the Team

Home Centre is the largest omnichannel retailer for home furnishings in the Middle East, North Africa & the Indian sub continent.

Home Centre offers outstanding value, quality products, and exceptional customer experience which is revealed in their new brand identity that is underpinned by their customer first approach of enabling every home to tell its own unique story.

Established in 1995 with its first store in the UAE, today Home Centre has a wide network of over 80 stores, across the UAE, KSA, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and India. Easy to navigate and serving as a one stop solution for all home furnishing, the Home Centre e commerce platform provides customers an extensive range of over 14,000 products at the tip of the fingers.