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Head of Beauty Buying

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

New Hot

General & Admin

Beauty

Requisition # 240003F9

About Us

As a leader in luxury retail in the Middle East, Al Tayer Group's retail division, Al Tayer Insignia, hosts a portfolio of some of the world’s best luxury brands in the fashion, jewellery, home and department store categories. Complementing its position in luxury retail, Al Tayer Insignia has also built new frontiers in lifestyle retail, representing leading brands in the Beauty, Home, Fashion and Hospitality sectors. Our brands include Bloomingdales, Harvey Nichols and Armani to name just a few!

What You’ll Be Doing

Strategic Roles and Responsibilities

· Participate in the development of the divisions’ commercial strategy, ensuring that relevant goals and objectives are incorporated.

· In partnership with the VP-Beauty set and manage the buying strategy, implementing the overall sales strategy as per business plans and prepare approach for brand management of brands to achieve budgeted sales and profitability.

· Assist with setting yearly budget and gross-margin in line with business plans and needs and monitor implementation of the budget.

· Drive the team to source and onboard new brands, drive business development and creative collaboration opportunities.

· Develop and maintain a dynamic relationship with brand principals in order to build and strengthen the brand.

· Leverage on constructive brand relationships to influence buying decisions in relation to product range, assortment and category management.

· Build strong cross-functional collaboration and relationships with planning, logistics, supply chain, marketing, commercial operations and online trading teams.

· Develop and improve Buying policies and procedures in order to deliver effective buying services, maximize OTB management, product lifecycles, gross margin and profitability.

· Assume overall BU level responsibility for the full life cycle of stock to maximize efficiencies, cost and profitability.

· Work with the VP-Beauty to oversee the digital business performance in close collaboration with the Digital teams aligning on strategy, business plans and annual targets. Ensuring we offer a best-in-class online experience for each market.

· Lead the Buying team to be first to market with new and trending brands.

Functional Roles and Responsibilities

· Assist in establishing weekly, monthly and annual sales objectives of the division in line with divisions overall sales and profitability targets.

· Contribute to commercial, digital trading, marketing and CRM strategies.

· Monitor the sales figures and operational costs against budgets, review and interpret financial data and trends to identify risks and opportunities and recommend necessary course of actions in order to maximize sales and profits.

· Ensure principals are informed of Buying Budgets, OTB performance and trends.

· Contribute to Brands marketing plans and implementation of measurable and cost-effective advertising and promotional campaigns/activities while ensuring adherence to budgets.

· Study market trends and consumer preferences to understand and specify customer expectations and adopt a suitable approach for brand management.

· Keep abreast of developments in Beauty market in the region and internationally. Maintain intelligence tab on market information and customer data.

· Work with digital, marketing and commercial teams to optimize the product positioning.

· Monitor closely Digital business performance and KPIs and provide guidance and direction to the Digital Team in driving Digital business and achieve business plans in terms of revenue, sell-out, market share and regional expansion.

· Facilitate continuous coordination with the Merchandising function, Digital and Commercial teams for Beauty to plan each season‘s collection and identify and source the optimal product mix to ensure profitable sales.

· Ensure that gross margins and sell-out targets developed during budget are accurate, achievable, challenging and meet management’s requests.

· Ensure that overall sell-out targets by store are in line with sell-out by categories at local and regional level.

· Monitor and validate sell-out targets by store and ensure that the potential of stores are well managed when defining store grading and assortment range and in terms of purchase decisions.

· Monitor that the right lines of products are selected during buying to ensure a high level of sell-out.

· Ensure that the necessary tools and KPIs are in place in all locations/countries to implement replenishment.

· Liaise with suppliers for discounts/ better terms when needed (or when supplier delays).

· Optimize inventory management in the region.

· Ensure that stock ageing levels remain within budget targets for all Brands handled.

· Propose discounts to maintain stock coverage.

· Provide analysis and recommendations on pricing including B&M vs online pricing using benchmarks for local, regional and all other relevant markets.

People Management Roles and Responsibilities

· Develop a high performing buying team, providing day to day coaching, feedback, support and guidance in managing business plans, performance and KPIs.

· Provide leadership, focus and direction to Buying teams towards the achievement of goals and objectives.

· Guide and motivate the team to enhance performance and produce quality work, and ensure that they continue to be developed for higher level roles.

· Identify and manage key talent; implement retention and succession plans for critical roles and key talent.

About You

Education/Certification and Continued Education

• Higher Education Degree. Post Graduate Degree, preferred.

Years of Experience

• Min of 10+ years of retail/merchandising/buying experience including both B&M and online business

Knowledge and Skills

• Excellent knowledge of Omni-channel retail business including commercial store operations as well as online trading.

• Strong knowledge of Buying function including OTB management, product category and assortment management, Budgeting & Forecast, product pricing, etc.

• Brand Management.

• Very strong negotiation skills.

• Project management skills.

• Proficient in MS office including PowerPoint and advanced Excel skills.

• Highly analytical; able to analyse complex sets of data; experience working with transactional and financial data and CRM analytics.

Languages

• English

• Arabic and French would be an advantage

Additional Information