Buyer

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

Work Location: In person

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