Buyer — Vanilla Underground
Tamworth, Staffordshire | Full-time, office-based
Salary: £32,000–£37,000
Vanilla Underground is a fast-growth licensed pop culture merchandise and clothing wholesale business, supplying major retail partners including Next, Matalan, Amazon and M&S. We're looking for a Buyer to take ownership of offshore buying across newness for the business, working closely with design, suppliers and licensors to bring ranges to life.
This is a hands-on, commercially-led buying role covering apparel and accessories across multiple licences. You'll manage the full product journey from research through to range sign-off, while also overseeing our Print on Demand project and supporting the wider team.
What you'll be doing
Buying:
- Managing offshore buys across newness for the business
- Researching licences, categories, competitors, marketplaces and pricing to inform product decisions
- Following the master critical path to keep to production lead times and seasonal deadlines
- Planning ranges and identifying appropriate licences and suppliers
- Preparing and delivering briefs to design and suppliers
- Working with design and suppliers to select designs and develop samples
- Providing detailed buying and sampling comments, with feedback logged and communicated clearly
- Building full range plans including CADs, ratios, quantities, estimated costs, RRPs, stock values and RSVs
- Working to a buying budget to ensure ranges make commercial sense
- Using sales data, comparable products and commercial judgement to set quantities
- Presenting ranges for internal sign-off
- Handing over completed range plans for costing and buying sheets
- Reviewing samples across apparel and accessories, feeding back on fit, construction and quality
Print on Demand:
- Managing the POD project
- Planning the POD calendar annually, forecasting option counts, licences and key ranges
- Selecting and prioritising styles based on sales, seasonality, brand approvals and movie releases
- Managing blank selection, purchasing and replenishment across multiple styles
- Buying and managing UK blanks to extend product availability
- Reviewing and forecasting blank requirements to support warehouse and printers
- Overseeing outsourcing of prints through multiple channels
Team support:
- Managing and allocating buying-specific workload for Buying Admins
- Feeding workload to both designers
- Supporting the Wholesale team with feedback
- Working closely with Production on all buys
- Supporting Sales Merch with replenishment quantity allocations
- Acting as first point of contact for supplier and licensor queries
What we're looking for
- Proven buying experience, ideally within licensed product, apparel or fashion wholesale
- Strong commercial judgement and confidence working to a budget
- Comfortable interpreting sales data to drive quantity and range decisions
- Excellent supplier and stakeholder communication
- Highly organised, able to manage multiple ranges and deadlines at once
- Experience briefing design teams and reviewing samples is a strong advantage
What you'll get
- The chance to work across a varied portfolio of major entertainment and pop culture licences
- A fast-growing business with real scope to shape the buying function
- A close-knit, collaborative team environment
Pay: £32,000.00-£37,000.00 per year
Work Location: In person
