Buyer - Boys Footwear

Job Advert Summary

Join Woolworths FBH as a Buyer II – Boys Footwear, based in Cape Town. As a leading South African retailer committed to quality, innovation, and transformation, Woolworths offers an exciting opportunity to shape customer-focused and commercially viable seasonal product strategies.

In this role, you will be responsible for developing a kids’ footwear range that is customer-focused, trend-relevant, and commercially viable, while aligning with the brand’s positioning and seasonal objectives. You will own the end-to-end product journey from concept and design to development and supplier briefing and working closely with footwear technologists to deliver high-quality products and a well-balanced assortment.

Minimum Requirements

• Relevant tertiary qualification in Fashion, Retail Buying, or Commerce.
• 2–3 years’ experience in Buying (Footwear Preferable)
• A strong understanding of a Kids Footwear Business.
• Strong computer literacy, with proficiency in Excel, PowerPoint, PLM, and EDITED.
• A passion for Quality Footwear.
• A continuous learning mindset with a drive for personal and professional growth.
• Solid understanding of retail business and buying processes, including critical path management.
• Up-to-date knowledge of the retail market and industry landscape.
• Strong grasp of pricing strategies including markdowns, markups, sell-through, and visibility drivers.
• Excellent numerical and analytical skills, with the ability to interpret data and drive product decisions.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a departmental seasonal plan
• • Collaborate with Planning, design and Sourcing to develop product, fabric and trading strategy to ensure the delivery of relevant KPI’s.
  • Utilise multiple data sources from design direction, global and local trend research, current trade and post-seasonal data, customer analytics, product and sourcing strategy, competitor intelligence and benchmarking, First Insights and EDITED to provide product direction for seasonal plan workshops in line with the overall Group Strategy.
  • Present seasonal product plan inclusive of key strategic areas, must-win categories / items and channel-specific considerations.
• Build a profitable balanced range
• • Conduct workshops to develop an on-brand product range that is trend appropriate and meets customer expectations, incorporating local and international comparative analysis, intelligence and benchmarking, with a clear intent of growth/exit product categories aligned with strategic goals.
  • Collaborate with the Design team to deliver a balanced range (styling, fabric, colour) within agreed price architecture and ensuring alignment to critical path and merchandise cycle milestones.
  • Collaborate with the Sourcing team on product development, including new concepts, supplier selection, costings, tech packs, packaging and quote approvals in line with the critical path milestones and merchandise cycle.
  • Collaborate with the Technical Product Development (TPD) on all sample approvals and sign-off samples, product reviews, final product presentation and innovation opportunities in line with the critical path milestones and merchandise cycle
  • Conduct product reviews and present the final product (concept, pre-production/production samples, packaging), taking into account display strategy (e.g. tables, ticketing)
  • Collaborate with planning (financials, assortment plan) and reconcile with strategy by grade, channel (online, Edit, Africa).
• Lead customer understanding and competitive intelligence
• • Work closely with Marketing to understand the Woolworths customer, including incorporating quarterly updates from the customer team.
  • Conduct market and trend research (EDITED, WGSN, competitor store visits) to understand the competitive landscape, range offering, product differentiation and merchandising strategies.
  • Analyse customer ratings and reviews to understand online customer preferences and customer experience.
  • Utilise supplier information and overseas travel to gain market insights.
  • Develop a product marketing proposal to optimize the customer experience instore and online
• Actively trade product range
• • Weekly sales trade analysis - analyse relevant reports (Monday trade, item report, style cards, Edited) to understand product and sales performance across channels to influence trade decisions, opportunities and actions to optimise sales.
  • Communicate any changes from current trade that impact other departments e.g. marketing and visual merchandising.
  • Weekly team standstill with Quad team to align on weekly tasks including production & shipment standstill, supplier communication and trade actions.