Assistant Buyer - Garden, Maintenance & DIY

Assistant Buyer - Garden, Maintenance & DIY

Our Buying teams on General Merchandise are key to delivering our ‘brands that deliver’ strategy. We’re a friendly team who love all things buying! Our buying teams are responsible for delivering our exciting and ambitious growth plans, offering our customers a great range of products, at a great price, through our multi-channel business.

We absolutely see the value in allowing our colleagues to work flexibly and that’s why our ways of working policy allows you to maintain a great work/life balance and gives you the opportunity to make your hours work for you, with plenty of opportunity to work from home.

You’ll input and deliver the 3-6 month promotional strategy for your category and support delivering accuracy in pricing across all of our channels. It takes a flair for relationship building and negotiation, coupled with an analytical approach. Buying forms the backbone of our business so is naturally incredibly fast-paced. You’ll be able to deliver a variety of strategies to help drive sales and profit, and who have an interest in understanding our customers and what they want. We're currently recruiting an Assistant Buyer to join our Garden, Maintenance & DIY category on a 12 month Fixed Term Contract.

As an Assistant Buyer you’ll:

• Support and input into team objectives to build a commercial, customer focused range through competitor benchmarking, market data and trend direction.
• Have an understanding of sales & profit variables and use of relevant leavers to trade effectively
• Be responsible for range optimisation and understand the in-store experience and impact the product ranges have on customers and store colleagues to inform future decisions.
• Have input into planograms, pricing, promotional activity, product specification, supplier selection as appropriate to the product area.
• Support negotiations with UK suppliers with Global sourcing team.
• Be accountable for the adherence to the buying milestones alongside PD and global sourcing withing the agreed critical path.
• Support the Buyer and Senior Buyer in liaising with the PD Team and Product Technologist in setting the quality criteria for own label products ensuring the optimal balance between quality and price is maintained.
• Have responsibility for administrative duties and approvals, sample management/

Our Buying team would love to see:

• Previous buying experience, preferably from a retail background
• A passion for product, balanced with understanding the need for commercial acumen
• Strong analytical and numerical skills
• Good written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent organisational and admin ability, along with knowledge of word and excel
• Negotiation skills and practices for UK suppliers
• Knowledgeable in market trends
• Ability to demonstrate problem solving and provide resolution in a fast paced environment

Why Sainsbury’s

Work-life balance is important to us, so we offer our colleagues as much flexibility as possible in line with the needs of their role. We trust them to decide how, where and when they work, combining remote and collaborative working with a flexible approach to hours, giving them plenty of time and space for life outside of work whilst delivering against our business goals.