Buying & Category Management
•Lead and manage the entire buying process, across Kids brands and product lines, to ensure the right and commercially viable product ranges, customer satisfaction, improvement in year-on-year sales, margins, and stock levels.
•Keep track of global trends, to deliver newness in the product range.
•Oversee category management to ensure maximization of sales and profitability.
•Manage financial goals, including pre-season plans, in-season projections, open-to-buy etc., to support retail requirements, whilst maintaining alignment with financial parameters.
•Lead the process of aligning the merchandising planners with the OTB to ensure that the right assortment is delivered to the stores
Product Development
•Oversee and guide the category throughout the entire product creation process, ensuring alignment with key deliverables and milestones to meet specified factory deadlines.
•Essential to thoroughly analyze and evaluate briefs, design tech packages, models, and samples. Additionally, identifying potential concerns related to construction, materials, fit, or cost is a crucial aspect.
•Playing a critical role in team coordination, managing relationships, facilitating reviews, overseeing delivery, and securing approvals.
•As an integral member of the buying team, involvement in providing valuable insights, suggestions, and information to ensure the timely delivery of quality products at the right cost is essential.
Stock & Cost Optimization
•Manage the inventory (including stock loss mitigation, booked inventory budget, terminal stock etc.) and maintain optimum stock levels in order to ensure that retail requirements are met within the given financial parameters.
•Manage centralized bulk buying, margins, markdowns etc. as well as select vendor mix to optimize costs.
Vendor & Order Management
•Establish and manage relationships with vendors and suppliers in order to ensure financially beneficial partnerships through maximizing the ranges, sales, profit margin and delivery within budget.
•Liaise with logistics to monitor supplier efficiency and effectiveness in order to ensure that potential risks and delays are identified, and appropriate remedial action taken.
•Place orders and ensure the merchandise is delivered on a timely basis, and in line with the service level agreements in order to ensure compliance with buying plans.
Analysis And Intelligence
•Analyze and monitor reports, MIS analytics etc. based on actual sales, forecasts, inventory checks, replenishment needs etc. in order to accurately forecast and meet the needs of the business.
•Analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats vis-a-vis competition and market conditions in order to identify business opportunities.
•Analyze customer buying trends, competitors, and market activities in order to predict future trends and seasonal product requirements.
Education, Skills & Experience
•Relevant qualifications in retail, design, or preferably footwear
•Minimum of 5 years of experience in buying for the relevant category (footwear)
•Knowledge of footwear retail within the region.
•Knowledge and ability to visualize and anticipate the needs of the business.
•Knowledge of the buying process and practices, including multiple critical path management.
•Knowledge of product development.
•Knowledge of trends and market shifts
Our journey started in 1973 with a single store in Bahrain. Since then, we have grown into a global retail and hospitality group. The proud creator of 25 plus value led, own-built brands across retail, hospitality, food, and leisure.
Over the years, our UAE - based group has evolved into a comprehensive retail and hospitality entity, with over 2200 retail stores, leisure, and hospitality outlets, panning the GCC, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Today, Landmark Group is one of GCC's largest omnichannel retailers and India's top home and fashion retailer.
We take immense pride in the organic growth of our retail brands, which have blossomed into household names. From Max, Splash, Babyshop, Centrepoint, Shoemart, Homecentre, Emax, Fitness First, to Funcity, to name a few, our brands span across a multitude of categories, enriching the lives of countless families over the past decade.
Founded in 1973 in Bahrain, Landmark Group has grown to become one of the largest and most successful omnichannel retail and hospitality conglomerates, with presence across 17 countries in the Middle East, Africa, India and Southeast Asia. Based in the UAE since 1990, the Group owns and operates 21 established homegrown and 4 franchise brands across an extensive network of more than 2,200 outlets, encompassing a gross leasable area of 30 million square feet.
Landmark Group's success is driven by its diverse portfolio of established brands, across multiple retail categories, offering a comprehensive range of products across fashion, home, groceries and electronics. These include Centrepoint, Max Fashion, Home Centre, Babyshop, Splash, Shoemart, Lifestyle, Viva, Emax, Home Box, Styli, Shoexpress, Spar and Easybuy.
Beyond retail, Landmark Group has diversified into the leisure, fitness and hospitality sectors with brands like Fitness First, Citymax, Fun City, Fun Ville, Zafran and Carluccio’s. The Group boasts unparalleled logistics capabilities, owning the MENA region's largest privately-owned distribution hub - Omega Logistics and Logistiq, which offers state-of-the-art third-party logistics services.
Landmark Group places a strong emphasis on delivering exceptional value and achieving customer satisfaction throughout its comprehensive product range. Across its loyalty programmes, the Group enjoys a loyal customer base with more than 35 million active users.
The company has a dedicated workforce of more than 53,000 employees and continues to be certified as a Great Place to Work (GPTW) since 2017.
