Assistant Buyer - Sports

Internal use only - Grade H

About us

We’re the team behind digital retailer Very. 

Our purpose, helping families get more out of life, powers everything we do. 

And we want our people to get more out of life too! If you’re high-performing, ambitious and make the most of every opportunity, we want to hear from you. In return, you’ll enjoy heaps of flexibility, great perks and benefits, and the freedom to be yourself, keep learning and take your career wherever you want it to go. 

If you love making a difference, you’ll love making it sparkle for millions of Very customers. ✨ 

About the team

The Sportstyle team are curating the freshest Sports Lifestyle trends for our customers to help them look and feel great every day. 

We are currently looking to grow our brand portfolio so now is an exciting time to join our team, make an impact and shape what’s next! 

About the role

We have a really exciting opportunity for an Assistant Buyer on Sports. You’ll report directly into the Buyer for the area so lots of opportunity to further develop your skills. 

Day to day you will be meeting and managing brand relationships, developing commercial range-plans suited to our customer, producing and presenting reports at trade meetings on trends, forecasts and opportunities.  You will be dealing with some of our strategic brands including New Balance, Converse, Vans and Puma.

Key Responsibilities: 

• Relationship management: both internally and externally will be important, building strong relationships to maximise commercial opportunities – Key relationships day to day email management with supply chain.  
• Commercial awareness: Awareness of the market is key, keeping track of competitor activity, market trends and price positioning. 
• Maintaining relationships with brands in line with our values 
• Able to deputise for the Buyer in key meetings. 
• Able to delegate or take lead and make decisions under pressure. 
• Formulating Range Frameworks/Brand Plans alongside merchandising functions 

About you

• You will be highly organised with great communication skills. 
• You know how to analyse performance and apply lessons learnt to future range building. 
• You can pre-empt potential challenges that may impact team or trading and take steps to minimise them before they arise. 

• You will build and maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders. 
• Able to deputise for the Buyer in key meetings. 
• Liaison with SMT and can clearly articulate category performance 
• Trading actions – identifying how to maximise best sellers and identifying worst sellers and minimising risk. 
• Able to delegate/ take the lead where required 

Some of our benefits

• Flexible, hybrid working model
• Inclusive culture and environment, check out our Glassdoor reviews
• £250 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
• 27 days holiday + bank holidays
• LinkedIn learning access
• Bonus potential (performance and business-related)
• Up to 25% discount on Very.co.uk

• Matched pension up to 6%
• More benefits can be found on our career site

How to apply 

Please note that the talent acquisition team are managing this vacancy directly, and if successful in securing this role, you will be required to undertake a credit, CIFAS, Right to Work checks and if a specific requirement of your role a DBS (criminal records) check. Should your application progress we require you to let the team know if there is anything you need to disclose in relation to any of these checks prior to them being undertaken, including any unspent criminal convictions.  

What happens next? 

Our talent acquisition team will be in touch if you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like we’re a good match, we’ll share your CV with the hiring manager to review. Our interview process is tailored to each role and can be in-person or held remotely.  

You can expect a one stage interview process for this position:  

1st stage - A one hour face-to-face interview with the hiring team to discuss your skills and relevant experience + competency questions. This is also a great opportunity to find out more about the role and to ask any questions you may have.  

As an inclusive employer please do let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments.  

If you'd like to know more about our interviews, you can find out here. 

Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities

We’re building a culture of everyday inclusion, and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We don’t discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.

We want our recruitment process to be accessible to everyone. If you need reasonable adjustments to apply, interview, or perform a role, let us know via [email protected]. We’ll be happy to support you.

We’re proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer and have nine brilliant colleague networks - including DAWN (Disability Awareness at Very) and Think (Neurodiversity at Very) - that are helping us make Very an even more inclusive place to work.