Job Postings From Our Member Companies Title:
Ecommerce Merchandise Buyer

Post Date
4/5/2013

Expiration Date
6/4/2013

Details:
Summary of Position
National Geographic is looking for an Ecommerce Merchandise Buyer who will be responsible for driving aggressive sales and profit growth through product sourcing, assortment planning and analysis, vendor negotiations, merchandising and inventory management. Source and develop merchandise that contributes to brand positioning and helps create market differentiation and increases customer loyalty. Responsible for all aspects of merchandise profitability and success.

Regular market travel required.

Responsibilities
Merchandise Sourcing and Selection:

- Develop a thorough understanding of the needs, wants, motivations and expectations of online customer segments. Build comprehensive understanding of the e-commerce market and online competitors by category.

- Develop detailed merchandise plans based on brand positioning and strategic business goals that include sales and contribution performance metrics and forecasts. Source and develop innovative, high-quality products that meet plan metrics by working with suppliers, attending trade shows, reviewing magazines, web sites, gear reviews, competition. Identify trends and expand on-line assortment through conducting market research and reviewing the competitive landscape.

- Identify and develop exclusive product ideas and opportunities. Lead the creation of product line from concept through full product life cycles to optimize profit and meet specific marketing, financial, and corporate growth objectives. Oversee and coordinate product development process and life cycle.

- Source new products and review existing items to ensure category and products remain competitive. Manage product selection process to include competitive and pricing analysis. Responsible for maintained margin (after liquidation).

- Adhere to deadlines. Maintain multiple spreadsheets to ensure smooth communication and flow. Responsible for on-time, accurate, thorough, efficient information / paperwork turn over to inventory, ops, customer service and creative. Maintenance of product and vendor information systems.

- Work as a collaborative team member to reach established goals. Ensure that all necessary communication is completed accurately and timely with inventory management, customer service, creative, marketing, and financial.

Marketing and Creative:

- Create product briefs that give clear directions and information to creative and marketing. To include product rationalization, key benefits / features / drivers, photography & positioning. Supply necessary materials to creative team on schedule and in an organized and easy to use format. Source enhanced product content such as copy, videos, and images.

- Review product layouts, photography, and copy to ensure accuracy and adherence to brand positioning. Collaborate with creative team to improve images on the site and to develop photography style guide.

- Develop merchandise promotional calendar to support overall branding objectives and marketing campaigns. Develop product assortments, merchandise themes and promotions for individual online marketing campaigns, including include email, search, and social media.

- Communicate product and category trends to the Online Marketing Manager to maximize return on investment for the SEO/SEM program. Provides pre-season information to the online search team to ensure the appropriate search buys are planned.

- Collaborate with web team to develop merchandise themes and identify product to be featured on website home page and category pages. Partner with web team to continually refine and advance the online shopping experience. Collaborate with site merchandisers to adjust site presentation based on inventory, promotion & sales trend.

- Evaluate product family groupings, sort orders, site search tuning, taxonomy, categorization strategies, and cross sells on a weekly basis to ensure they are consistent with sales and brand positioning goals. Review web analytics, sales data, and customer reviews to monitor business performance and customer feedback, analyze categories, promotions, and web related content. Develop strategy and take appropriate actions including the taxonomy, navigation, search, promotional pages, and product detail pages.

Reporting and Analysis:

- Develop and distribute weekly web product sales report to include sales, margin, and inventory quantities by sku, item and category. Develop and communicate detailed category reviews, analyze and report category business performance.

- Prepare seasonal line reviews to formally present complete category analysis (including sales, margin, returns, profit, inventory), vendors, competitive review, marketing and growth opportunities.

- Perform financial analysis of business categories and provide insights of sales, pricing, and other ongoing opportunities for growing the business. Develop additional reports, analytics and metrics to improve our business.

Inventory/Vendor Management and Quality Control:

- Establish strong business relationships with high quality vendors in order to maximize profitability and achieve financial objectives. Build relationships with existing suppliers and source new suppliers for future products.

- Evaluate and monitor vendors on the basis of price, quality, support, availability, reliability and selection. Conduct vendor and partner evaluations. Negotiate costs, terms and performance metrics with suppliers. Ensure on-time delivery of quality products at competitive prices.

- Responsible for product evaluation, testing, quality control, packaging review. Responsible for resolving product quality issues that arise at call center and the warehouse, or via customer reviews. Troubleshoot product delivery issues.

- Responsible for developing sales forecast and initial order quantities for all new items. Partner with inventory team to maintain appropriate inventory levels (including the forecasting, purchasing, and return of seasonal products). Including determining and executing exit strategies for unproductive inventory.

Supervision Exercised
Supervision of interns required.

Qualifications:
Minimum Education & Experience
Bachelor's degree required. Must have at least 5 years of direct to consumer ecommerce merchandising experience including 3 years of merchandise sourcing and buying experience. In addition, 1-2 years of experience working with ecommerce platforms, web content management systems, and web analytics such as Omniture preferred.

Knowledge & Skill Requirements
Merchandising:

- Demonstrated ability to find innovative new products that will appeal to target customer. Ability to understand product trends and to creatively translate them to a specific business and customer.

- Ability to manage a category at both macro and micro level and an understating of the impact it has on the organization as a whole.

- Experience developing exclusive products. Able conceive/create new thinking and ideas pertaining to the product and the process.

- Must possess strong negotiation skills and be able to form successful vendor relationships.

Analytics and Planning:

- Must have demonstrated business acumen and advanced financial planning skills. Excellent analytical skills with strength in planning assortments and developing product lines. Ability to budget and achieve financial goals.

- Advanced experience with MS Excel. Ability to extract data from multiple sources into Excel in order to manipulate and develop reports to improve decision making.

Strategic Skills:

- Able to think strategically and innovatively. Must process an entrepreneurial spirit; highly proactive, self motivated and driven.

- Ability to plan and organize priorities in order to meet all deadlines. Able to work quickly, accurately and efficiently while under pressure.

- Must demonstrate a capacity to operate successfully in a fast paced, changing, deadline-driven environment and be able to make decisions and implement recommendations quickly to drive for continuous improvement.

- Excellent interpersonal, planning and organizational skills. Strong presentation skills. Strong oral and written communication skills.

- Must work well in cross-functional teams, e.g., marketing, inventory planning, web operations, technology, etc. to drive business goals

- Must have a strong sense of ownership and 'get things done' attitude.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Comments:
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Employer:
National Geographic Society
Contact:
Human Resources

Website:
http://bit.ly/XXDQzG