Effective buying and merchandising teams are essential for driving profitability, product turnover, and a positive customer experience. They have diverse skill sets with buyers needing to possess a strong blend of market knowledge, analytical skills, and negotiation expertise, while merchandisers must demonstrate in-depth product knowledge, creativity, and strong numeracy skills.
In addition to the skills they bring, the structure of your team is equally important. This guide will show you how to build an effective buying and merchandising team to drive success for your business.
Skills Your Buying and Merchandising Team Will Need
Several key skills are necessary for success when building a buying and merchandising team for your retail business. Firstly, we’ll take a look at which skills a buyer must have.
The Essential Skills of a Buyer
To ensure that your retail business is getting the best buyer possible, the candidate must demonstrate expert knowledge of the relevant market, analytical abilities, and negotiation skills.
Market Knowledge
Retail is an industry where trends constantly fluctuate. As an organisation, you must stay abreast of the latest trends, or your competition will capitalise while you languish. A buyer who is connected with what’s current will be beneficial for the following reasons:
- Competitive Advantage: Knowing market trends allows buyers to identify opportunities before the competition. On the other hand, an awareness of trending products means a business can differentiate and offer something unique. By providing new, innovative products, companies can build brand loyalty. A study found that 1 in 4 consumers want retail businesses they shop with to make it easy to find products that they’ll like.
- Understanding and Anticipating Customer Demand: By knowing what a customer wants, buyers can select products that connect with the company’s target audience. This allows for more efficient inventory planning and reduces the risk of overstocking or accumulating dead stock.
Analytical Skills
A retail business will benefit greatly if a buyer has analytical skills. Data is integral to operations as it enables data-driven decision-making. Let’s explore what an experienced professional can bring to your company:
- Cost and Price Optimisation: With a firm understanding of the data on cost, margins and competitor pricing, buyers can negotiate with suppliers to get the best price possible. Scrutinising the supply chain expenses also provides scope for finding areas where costs could be reduced.
- Customer Insights: Tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar allow buyers to gain insight into customer demographics and buying patterns. A deep understanding of customer behaviour presents rewarding opportunities through personalisation. As per a report by McKinsey, 78% of consumers are likely to make a repeat purchase and recommend a business that uses personalisation.
- Performance Tracking: Performance tracking allows buyers to use KPIs such as sales per square foot, inventory turnover, and gross margin return on investment (GMROI) to maximise profitability.
Negotiation Expertise
As mentioned, buyers can use data to analyze competitor pricing, allowing them to make informed decisions. With strong negotiation skills, buyers can secure favourable prices for their retail business. For example, a volume discount allows retailers to purchase large quantities of high-demand items at a reduced cost.
Other advantages of negotiation skills include:
- Quality and Product Specifications: Buyers can ensure that the products their company stocks meet the quality demanded by the business by negotiating product specifications with suppliers so that only high-quality materials are sourced.
- Strengthening Supplier Relationships: Win-win deals can be struck whereby both parties benefit. This can lead to improved trust and the possibility of favourable terms and conditions.
Must-Have Skills for a Merchandiser
For the same reasons as buyers, merchandisers must be able to analyse data. However, some skills distinguish the two roles. For example, merchandisers must have creative flair to maximise sales. Here’s an overview of the skills your merchandiser should have to bring success to your retail business.
Product Knowledge
Merchandisers must have expert product knowledge to make informed decisions about product selection, placement, pricing, and promotion.
- Product Selection: A strong understanding of product knowledge allows merchandisers to pick products that align with current trends, satisfy customer demands, and are relevant to the season.
- Placement and Presentation: Considering colour, size and style, merchandisers can decide where to position products in a physical or digital environment to maximise sales. It’s key that merchandisers have an eye for creativity so that products grab the attention of potential customers.
- Pricing and Promotions: Merchandisers can identify which products can be discounted, added to a bundle deal, or increased in price. By knowing products’ unique selling points, items can be promoted to illustrate their true value.
Numerical Proficiency
Whether it is analysing sales data or managing inventory, numeracy is central to much of a merchandiser's work. Here are some examples:
- Sales Analysis and Forecasting: As mentioned, merchandisers must blend analytical and numerical skills to identify spending trends and project future demand.
- Inventory Management: Dealing with numbers is critical for proper inventory management. Errors can have severe ramifications for a retail business. For instance, 75% of all businesses suffer losses due to lax inventory control methods - a skilled merchandiser can mean your business is in the 25%.
- Budgeting and Mitigating Financial Risk: As a retail business, you may require your merchandiser to work within a budget and allocate resources efficiently. Numerical skills allow for key metrics to be tracked so that spending can be optimised without exceeding limits and financial targets met.
Need support in finding the skills you need for your business to grow? Discover how our services can support you in finding the talent you need.
Building Your Buying and Merchandising Team
Establishing a structure is an essential aspect of building an effective buying and merchandising team. Much of this will depend on the size of your retail business. A small firm might require just a buyer and a merchandiser, while a larger company will be better suited with multiple professionals with designated roles and responsibilities.
Bigger businesses may have such a vast choice of items that they need to have specialised roles for particular products or categories. For example, if an organisation stocks products for men, women, and children, a buyer and merchandiser might be enlisted to oversee its operations for improved efficiency and expertise.
How do you Attract Relevant Talent?
When assembling a buying and merchandising team, there’s plenty to consider. As outlined, buyers and merchandisers combine specific skills paramount for a retail business - in addition, it’s imperative that they align with the company’s values. Here’s how you could attract the individuals with the necessary skills to your business:
Sell the Unique Opportunities of the Role
- Combining Creativity and Analytic Abilities: Buying and merchandising teams require a combination of creativity and strong analytical skills. They need to have a keen eye for spotting trends and selecting products that will appeal to customers, while also being able to analyse sales data, predict demand, and make strategic decisions based on numbers.
- Trends and Innovation: Buying and merchandising require a combination of creativity and strong analytical skills. They need to have a keen eye for spotting trends and selecting products that will appeal to customers, while also being able to analyse sales data, predict demand, and make strategic decisions based on numbers. Whether it’s selecting the right products or planning a promotional campaign, it’s all about finding that sweet spot where creativity meets insight.
- Influence: As a buyer or merchandiser, their decisions have a huge impact, not just on what products make it onto the shelves but on the entire customer experience. From choosing the products customers see and interact with, to how they're displayed, they’ll be influencing the shopping experience every step of the way. Their work creates an exceptional experience for your customers.
Provide Career Growth Opportunities
- Development Programs: Highlight the various training and development opportunities available to support candidates' ongoing professional growth. This can include workshops, mentorship programmes, online courses, and certifications designed to enhance skills and knowledge.
- Cross-Functional Role: With buying and merchandising jobs, there’s often opportunities to work closely with other departments, such as marketing and finance. These opportunities help drive skill development and cross-department communication, which can be key in achieving wider business goals.
Showcase Success Stories and Testimonials
- Employee Stories: Current team members share stories to provide a real-world example of the role, team and business. These can be in the form of case studies, videos, and testimonials that are displayed on the company website and on social media platforms.
- Examples of Success: Showcase examples of where the buying and merchandising team impacted the business, such as choosing a best-selling product or helping the company meet changing customer demands. Again, these can be displayed online and through social media.
Utilise Targeted Recruitment Channels
- Industry-Specific Job Boards: Use industry-specific job boards focused on retail or specific product categories, as well as LinkedIn groups where buyers and merchandisers are active.
- Social Media: Use platforms such as LinkedIn, Tiktok, and X, to build a strong brand image, share success stories and connect with possible candidates.
Use an Expert Recruitment Agency
Evidently, finding relevant talent can quickly become an arduous task that drains time and money. However, recruitment specialists like W Talent can alleviate that stress. With their expertise and industry knowledge, their approach will encompass the above methods while having access to an extensive network.
Here’s an overview of the benefits of partnering with us:
- As referenced, our team of industry experts have a deep network and access to professionals who can seamlessly fill leadership roles.
- We pride ourselves on clear, transparent communication to build trust. This has helped us build long-lasting relationships built on trust.
- Our reputation speaks for itself. We are a premium global recruitment partner because we consistently deliver results.
Let’s Wrap Up Building a Buying and Merchandising Team
An effective buying and merchandising team is core to the success of any retail business. As outlined, a buyer who has market knowledge, analytical skills and the ability to negotiate can spearhead a firm’s competitiveness. Merchandisers fuse a flair for creativity with numerical expertise to drive sales through product placement.
Amplifying the team’s efficacy is also important. Retail businesses should choose a suitable size and structure and delegate specific roles where necessary. However, none of this is possible without relevant, experienced and skilled candidates. Sourcing said talent can be difficult; however, recruitment expertise is available to steer retail businesses to success with strategic talent acquisition.
Identifying Buying and Merchandising Talent
We take great pride in having leading consultants at the core of our organisation. Their expertise, passion, and experience allow us to deliver an unparalleled experience when securing key talent.
W Talent is unique. We have the flexibility of a startup but with the financial backing of a large group. This enables us to be adaptable and provide successful solutions for emerging startups and established multinational companies.
Want to learn how we can support you? Visit our dedicated buying and merchandising page or contact us today to speak with a team member.