Company Description

Head of Buying, Womenswear

Because you lead our next look. Buying, our way. 

Buying & Merchandising at Primark  

Our buying team is shaping the future of our product offerings. Immerse yourself in the world of trends and consumer preferences, influencing our product selection to meet the needs of our diverse customer base. Collaborate with a team of trend setters and bring your vision to one of the brightest brands in the industry.

As Head of Buying, you will lead your Buying teams in developing and buying an innovative, commercial and quality range. The Head of Buying will act as a leader and role model for best practice in Buying at Primark.

You will build a culture of innovation and creativity within your teams, while providing a clear vision and sense of direction in working towards a common goal. You will develop and empower your teams; fostering a high-performing culture through target-setting, performance evaluation and employee engagement.

You will ensure that we continue to build trend-led ranges to surprise and delight our customers, while remaining commercially competitive and fulfilling Primark’s value proposition. You will ensure our strategy is adaptable and maintain flexibility to deliver customer needs. As a leader in Primark, you will be responsible for developing and executing department strategies that will support and help to evolve the key Primark strategic pillars.

As part of this role, you will work alongside Merchandising and Design leadership teams and will represent your product areas at senior leadership level. You will build strategic partnerships with your key stakeholders, and influence decision-making on Product.

As Head of Buying, you will continually seek to identify new opportunities to enhance our product proposition, through external market analysis, internal cross-departmental collaboration and by forming strategic relationships with quality suppliers and through internal cross-departmental collaboration.

Job Description

What You’ll Do as Head of Buying

In your role, you’ll collaborate with different people across a range of skillsets. Here’s a flavour of your day-to-day:  

Development of Innovative Products at Amazing Prices

Focuses the team on creating innovative product ranges and using quality insights to improve future product development.
Develops exciting, high quality, commercial products within a commercial price architecture, which maximise sales and product opportunities and exceed the customer expectations.
Leads change in direction and follows intuition, market and consumer insights.
Encourages the team to be bold, brave and use product and market data to quickly predict & move on trends. Ensures that these trends are translated into commercial products.
Understands the Primark customer and continuously seeks to identify ways to offer outstanding product and value to them. Enables the function to collect customer data and predict their future needs.
Continually monitors critical paths across the department and lead teams through key milestones to ensure crucial deadlines are being delivered.
Responsible for making impactful, commercially viable decisions related to range building, which support the delivery of successful product ranges.

Commercial Trading

Delivers commercial value through profit, market share, volume, stock turn and capturing mass opportunities.
Leads the team to deliver on set company targets including sales, margin and profit contribution.
Understands the external environment; has deep commercial and customer knowledge and encourages the team to develop their own understanding of the external environment.
Focuses the team on analysing and reacting to market trends, consumer behaviour and competitor activity.
Analyses performance data and collaborates cross-departmentally to share trading successes or lessons learned.
Responsible for robust financial range planning; manages budgets and resources to maximise commercial value.
Develops and shares strategies and plans and takes ownership for delivering these strategies. Leads improvements and change and ensures team is enabled to deliver the best commercial outcomes.

Range Strategy

Develops and oversees lasting partnerships with high potential and key suppliers, in line with Primark’s supplier strategy.
Encourages the team to build and nurture supplier relationships and focuses them on generating ideas to make the best out of these relationships.
Ensuring that all suppliers uphold Primark’s policies, in collaboration with the Ethical, Sourcing and Legal teams.
Monitors and evaluates the performance of suppliers in terms of price, quality, deliver and ethical standards. Responsible for overseeing negotiation and onboarding of new suppliers and dissolution of underperforming supplier partnerships.
Understands how to drive performance in the Primark supply chain and delivers the best solutions.
Is a skilled negotiator and guides the team in using their judgement and reasoning to handle effective supplier negotiations.

Leadership

Lead, coach and develop a high-performing Buying team, setting clear expectations and addressing performance proactively.
Build talent and succession plans that meet current and future business needs.
Inspire, motivate and role model strong leadership behaviours, driving creativity, accountability and alignment across teams.
Champion innovative thinking, cross-functional collaboration and shared ownership of Buying outcomes.
Direct and shape overall voice of Buying within department whilst harnessing creativity and innovation in others.

Collaboration

Builds trust and credibility across Primark and develops strong internal networks and partnerships to achieve strategic objectives. Facilitates learning, ideas and information sharing across teams.
Collaborate with and influence stakeholders in all relevant business areas to deliver commercially successful product ranges for Primark.
Form strategic partnerships and productive working relationships with preferred suppliers aligned to Primark strategy.
Establish forums to educate and empower on-the-ground teams to adapt for local communities through VM, social media & marketing.

Qualifications

What You’ll Bring  

Here at Primark, we want everyone to feel valued – so please bring your authentic self to work, of course with some other key experience and abilities for this role in particular: 

10+ years of experience in a Buying role, with at least 5 years in a senior management position
Relevant qualification in a fashion-related or commerce-related subject, or equivalent experience
Demonstrated experience in the implementation and execution of Buying strategies and plans
Experience in creating a high-performance culture through target setting, performance evaluation, and employee engagement. Strong leadership skills, with the ability to effectively coach, guide and mentor while ensure the team achieves its goals
Demonstrated experience creating effective relationships across the business, with prior experience of relationship management at Executive levels.
Demonstrated ability in developing a culture that embraces innovation, and challenges existing paradigms without compromising business performance
Highly skilled negotiator with demonstrated experience in supplier management
Creates trusted relationship and collaborates across multi-functional teams to successfully drive business objectives.
Seeks new opportunities and ways to create balanced business growth while improving operational capabilities.
Promotes customer centricity and ensures focus on creating great customer experiences.

Additional Information

What You’ll Get 

People are at the heart of what we do here, so it’s essential we provide you with the right environment to perform at your very best. Let’s talk lifestyle:     

Healthcare for family, car allowance, pension, and potential bonus.
27 days of leave, plus bank holidays and if you want, you can buy 5 more.
Because Primark is all about tailoring to you, we offer Tax Saver Tickets, fitness centre, and a subsidised cafeteria.

Does this sound like you? Great, because we can’t wait to see what you’ll bring. You’ll be supported within a team of equally capable people, celebrating who you are and aiding you reach your potential. At Primark, we’re excited about our future - and we’re excited to develop yours.  

About Primark 

At Primark, people matter. They’re the beating heart of our business and the reason we’ve grown from our first store in Dublin in 1969 to a £9bn+ turnover business and over 80,000 colleagues and over 440 stores in 17 countries today. Our values run through everything we do. In essence, we're Caring and always strive to put people first. We're also Dynamic, bravely pushing the boundaries to stay ahead. And finally, we succeed Together.  

If you need any reasonable adjustments or have an accessibility request, during your recruitment journey, such as extended time or breaks between online assessments, a sign language interpreter, mobility access, or assistive technology please contact your talent acquisition specialist. 

All offers of employment are subject to background checks, including right to work, reference education and for some roles criminal, and financial checks. If you have any concerns, please reach out to our talent acquisition team to discuss. 

Our fashion isn’t one-size-fits-all and neither is our culture. Primark promotes equal employment opportunity, we strive to create an inclusive workplace where people can be themselves, access opportunities and thrive together

Head of Buying - Womenswear

Benefits

Job Description