Lenskart - Head - Buying & Planning

Head Buying & Planning

Job description :

The Head of Buying and Merchandising will lead and manage the buying and merchandising team. They will be the link between retail, wholesale and Ecommerce. To support business growth & act as a centralized control for all of the category heads, Implement planning excellence to improve profits, great assortment buying basis consumer preference.

Key Responsibilities :

Drive biz through buying and planning awesome product assortment to achieve sales across channels.

1) Category planning (e.g. planning for right width, depth, OTB, category gaps & range planning, inventory management, right mix of core/ fashion, attribute groups, etc.)

2) Buying :

- Seasonal product assortment across all channels (& support diff. geographies)

- Working closely with vendors & in-house design teams to ensure constant inflow of innovation, new designs aligned with pulse of consumers including trend forecasting, consumer insights etc. Re-ordering of high selling lines & ensuring sufficient DOH

3) Ensuring timely go-live: Working closely with supply chain & internal teams for product sampling, QC, timely delivery to ensure availability including ensuring GRN, product feed, catalogue management etc.

4) Successful collection launches & store assortment planning (eg What products to send to which type of stores without over-spreading)

5) Daily trade to maximize ROS :

Actively managing product life cycle (PLC), store spread and discounting to maximize sales (eg ensuring spread of high selling products, slow movers to discontinue from buying, when & what to put on liquidation etc.)

6) Support margins and quality promise

7) Driving product development, vendor management, working in collaboration with the design team, etc.

KPIs to drive :

- Overall: Channel wise sales & margins (shared with channels)

- Availability of bestsellers (at warehouse & stores)

- Achievement of PLC wise ROS targets

- Sell through of new lines

- Achievement of PLC wise DOH targets

Job requirements :

- Masters in Fashion from NIFT or other global reputable colleges with 12+ years' experience of managing multiple categories / merchandizing experience.

Ideal candidate :

- Data and detail oriented

- Strong consumer centricity to pick the pulse of the market/ fashion trends.

- Strong experience of driving PnL

- Strong analytical & numerical approach towards problem solving

- Good team building & management skills mandatory.