What do retail buyers do and how can you approach them
Best Years is a stuffed toy wholesaler which was set up and run by Gaynor Humphrey and Liz Cochrane.
We were both retail buyers for over 20 years each and between us we have worked for Boots, Texas Homecare, Hamleys, Disney, Mothercareand Dixons. We had a variety of titlesfrom Buyer to (my personal favourite)Director of Strategic Relationships but the basic job was chosing products, negotiating prices and getting them in to the shops
We have now been out of retail buying for almost 10 years as we build up our fair trade wholesale business but here is our quick synopsis of what retailer buyers are doing (when they are not avoiding calls from small businesses) and tips about how to contact them if you really want to.
Retail buyers are there to select products for retailers which sell in volume at a profit. They work with a team including the Supply Manager who works out how many of each product to buy and how much money to spend, and a Marketing Mgr who works out promotions and manages things like the store Xmas gift guide.
The Buyer, Supply Manager and Marketing Manager will all then have an Assistant buyer and a buying assistant or their equivalent. They will report in to a Category Manager who is responsible for the profitability of the total range.
The day to day job of a retail buyer involves meeting with existing suppliers to see potential new products and negotiate prices, meetings with the team to plan the shape of future ranges (typically a large store will be planning ranges 10-18 months before the actual season), sorting out issues with current ranges such as what to do with slow sellers, how to get more stock of good sellers right down to system issues with barcodes. There is a lot of meetings, a lot of maths and spreadsheets and a lot of travelling. As far as jobs go its absolutely fab!
It also gives you some great skills which have been instrumental in the success of our business as we built up relationships with Pebble toys and other suppliers. We also gained knowledge of legislation, both on toy safety and also the rights and wrongs of retailing