Fashion Buying Manager

About the Company

We are a commercially focused fashion retail company dedicated to creating customer-centric collections, spotting new trends, managing compelling product assortments, and achieving profitable growth through multiple channels including physical stores, e-commerce, marketplaces, and other fashion outlets. Our distributed teams collaborate across Fashion Buying, Merchandising, Design, Product Development, Assortment and Merchandise Planning, Sourcing, Procurement, Supplier Management, Retail Operations, Marketing, Pricing, Finance, Supply Chain, and Logistics to deliver the right products, brands, styles, quantities, price tiers, and timing to customers.

Role Overview

The Fashion Buying Manager will spearhead the strategy and execution of buying activities across designated categories, brands, channels, stores, and regions. This role requires blending trend insight, customer comprehension, commercial analysis, product expertise, supplier negotiation skills, and financial discipline to construct profitable assortments.

Key Responsibilities

• Create and execute buying strategies matching brand positioning, customer needs, category goals, sales targets, margin aims, and fiscal plans.
• Oversee end-to-end buying for assigned categories and markets.
• Convert fashion strategies, customer insights, market trends, and commercial goals into practical buying programs.
• Choose optimal combinations of products, styles, colors, fabrics, sizes, price points, and brands to build balanced assortments.
• Plan buying activities on an annual, seasonal, quarterly, monthly, and in-season basis.
• Manage the buying calendar ensuring timely decision-making aligned with seasonal deadlines.
• Lead buying cycles from trend analysis through range selection, order placement, launch, trading, and final evaluation.
• Develop strategies for multiple fashion seasons including Spring/Summer, Autumn/Winter, holidays, and special occasions.
• Analyze historical sales and product performance data to inform future buying decisions.
• Constantly monitor global and regional trends, competitor activities, social media, customer behavior, and cultural shifts to spot commercially viable fashion trends.
• Conduct competitor and market assortment analysis to identify differentiation opportunities and assortment gaps.
• Establish product range architectures, assortment breadth, SKU counts, and buy quantities tailored by category, store cluster, channel, and market.
• Adapt buying strategies for different store formats, geographic regions, and customer segments.
• Develop e-commerce and digital marketplace buying plans, balancing assortment expansion with inventory and supplier constraints.
• Collaborate with design and product development teams providing commercial input and feedback to optimize product offerings.
• Lead and evaluate new product launches, post-launch performance, and post-season reviews to refine strategies.
• Manage the full product lifecycle, deciding on reorder, markdown, carryover, or discontinuation to optimize inventory.
• Administer Open-to-Buy budgets ensuring alignment with financial plans and making in-season adjustments as needed.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Proven experience in fashion buying, retail merchandising, merchandise buying, or related commercial fashion functions.
• Experience spanning womenswear, menswear, childrenswear, footwear, accessories, beauty, lifestyle, luxury, premium, fast fashion sectors, department stores, specialty retail, e-commerce, or marketplaces is advantageous.
• Deep knowledge of fashion products including styles, fits, fabrics, colors, and trends across customer segments.
• Strong capability to identify commercially relevant trends blending creative intuition with quantitative financial and sales analysis.
• Solid understanding of assortment planning principles including range architecture, SKU productivity, and product roles.