Natalie, Assistant Buyer – Lifestyle Brands
Tell us about your career to date.
I did a BSC (Hons) in International Fashion Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University, working on the Buying team at Debenhams Head Office in my industrial placement year. After completing my course, I went to the USA to do a graduate program with Limited Brands working for Express Fashion. Whilst I was there, I worked in the production & sourcing department. I have been at BLG for a year now on the buying team working on mens, womens and kidswear.
What do you do in your role?
Having just been given a new challenge on the Lifestyle brands team I have moved from the own brand development side of buying where my main responsibilities included liaising with our suppliers, negotiating costs, resolving issues, ensuring on time delivery & most importantly ensuring the fit/aesthetics of the product is right for our customer. On my new team I assist the buyer in making sure we have the right brands on board & then selecting the right product from the biggest international brands taking into consideration how we're going to display the range in the stores. We will be attending European trade shows like Bread & Butter to see the new up and coming brands and buy for next spring/summer. Every Monday we review the sales figures to find out which brands/lines are performing the best and the worst so that we can ensure we work with our merchandising team to have availability of the bestselling lines and place repeat orders where necessary, this also gives us direction for the future as we get a good idea of what our customer is buying in to.
What do you like about working at Blacks?
It is encouraging as an employee that we are going in the right direction as a company and reacting to big changes in the market. We have new concept stores across the UK and they're looking really good so it's exciting to be a part of the project and being able to have an input. I think it's a great place to work because it's a very friendly buying office even though everyone's working extremely hard, it's quite a relaxed environment.