About:

Macy’s is proudly America’s Department Store. For more than 160 years, Macy’s has served generations at every stage of their lives. Customers come to us for fashion, value and celebration.

Macy’s Merchandising curates the best national and private brands to support our customer’s self-expression from off-price to luxury. Merchandising ensures Macy's is the premier fashion authority using a high acumen for products and trends as well as strong relationships with vendors in the marketplace. Our team maximizes sales and gross margin for each product category by identifying, procuring, and assorting the products that our customers demand.

Do you have an eye for products and trends? Join Macy’s Merchandising and create connections that surprise and delight our customers at every turn.

Job Overview:

Bring your merchandising creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to the best name in retail. Join Macy’s Backstage, our off-price initiative, and help us build this new brand while building your personal portfolio.

Success factors include

• The skillful use of influence and flexibility in approach to negotiations
• A passion and curiosity about the business and our customer
• The ability to thrive in a startup environment where you can influence the culture of the organization
• The flexibility to take on any task necessary

Key responsibilities include driving sales inventory turn, margin and growth by understanding your customer, developing winning merchandising strategies and assortments, leveraging relationships and reacting with speed, confidence and professionalism.

IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE

The Buyer will be known as a trusted, collaborative and results-oriented leader, business partner and change agent who can lead through influence and who possesses professional maturity and industry credibility. The ideal candidate is a skilled merchant, has a passion for trend, and is a student of the business. The ideal candidate needs to be comfortable and effective leading through complexity and rapid growth. The ideal candidate will be known for both strategic assortment vision to drive sales and an equally strong orientation for speed.

The successful candidate will:

• Have ability to set and to deliver on a strategic assortment vision that aligns to the Macy’s Backstage initiatives and delivers financial targets.
• Develop compelling assortments that represent fashion trend and significant value.
• Develop and sustain vendor partnerships, skillfully negotiating optimal assortments to deliver at the right time and at the best value.
• Size growth opportunities, identify and aggressively pursue opportunities to drive sales and surprise & delight our customers.
• Reduce complexity, act decisively, model agility in leadership style.
• Be a strong team leader and collaborator. Embrace change, give and receive feedback to foster a culture of “getting better every day”.
• Enthusiasm, passion, and desire to gain product expertise.
• Have ability to set and to deliver on a strategic category vision that aligns to the North Star strategy.
• Communicate with candor and value open debate to ensure the best ideas come to life.

Essential Functions:

• Objectively assess assortments with the customer in mind. Ensure customer value and product trends are part of merchandising decisions.
• Identify white space opportunities in the off price environment and bring them to market with attention to speed and value.
• Analyze the business from an entrepreneurial viewpoint by consistently reaching for the next layer of business to introduce it to the consumer quickly.
• Develop strong and trusting vendor relationships by focusing on win-win solutions. Skillfully exercise creativity and flexibility in approach to negiotiations whether celebrating successful agreements or gracefully declining proposals.
• Identify and evaluate key brands to target for sales; position and pitch MOP to acquire new vendors.
• Establish and maintain a reputation of credibility, integrity and responsiveness with all internal and external partners.
• Lead development of pre-season financial plans at the department, vendor, and class levels. In season, manage liquidity to take advantage of opportunistic purchases to drive business and flex sales plan from one department to another or one vendor to another.
• Present brand and/or classification strategies to DMM.
• Develop and orchestrate Marketing strategies focused on customer profiles.
• Travel as required for:
  • Competitive shopping.
  • Markets.
  • Store visits.
  • Warehouse to assess and evaluate inventory.
• Build and Develop Talent to prepare for next level.
• Develop self – attend ongoing professional development and training.

Qualifications and Competencies:

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Minimum 5 years buying experience which must include off price buying experience at the associate level or above.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Creative thinker who is willing and able to take calculated risks.
• Skillful negotiator who is able to develop win-win solutions to complex business issues.
• Adept problem solver who is able to make sound decisions using equal parts intuition and analytics.
• Strong leadership profile, ability and passion for developing talent and honing own skills, ability to thrive in an autonomous environment.
• Ability to work a flexible schedule based on department and company needs.

Physical Demands:

• This position requires frequent travel to market, stores, warehouse and shopping the competition.

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