Job Details
**Retail Buyer**
at East Fork Asheville, NC or Remote **Position Description**
The Retail Buyer is responsible and accountable for building and maintaining an evergreen and seasonal product assortment of kitchen and tabletop objects that contribute meaningfully to both the brand and company bottom-line.
The Retail Buyer develops relationships with third-party vendors to procure quality products for resale and maintains inventory levels that correspond to product sell-through and planned marketing efforts. They build and maintain a data-backed, brand-aligned, beautiful, desirable product assortment of kitchen and tabletop objects that contributes meaningfully to the bottom-line and our long-term brand equity, complements our pottery assortment, and is updated seasonally to reflect content marketing strategy and stay looking fresh.
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**Responsibilities**
**Buying**
* Collect, organize, analyze and share sales and performance data by product and category
* Collaborates with Marketing Team to align seasonal/flex buys with pottery color launches, quarterly themes, and content calendar
* Procure an assortment of products from values-aligned vendors that both reflects and expands our brand aesthetic, augments the experience and understanding of our own work, and builds brand equity
* Schedule, plan, and lead seasonal buying team planning meetings with relevant stakeholders from marketing and sales
* Maintain purchasing budget based on quarterly open-to-buy established by Director of Sales
* Maintain adequate inventory levels with resale goods across all channels, while maintaining annualized goal of gross margin ROI and avoiding stock outs
* Initiate, build, deepen, and maintain sincere, compassionate, mutually beneficial, and collaborative relationship with vendors
* Participates in the development and procurement of new white-label products and merch, sets costs, determines buy quantity, and communicates with vendor, in collaboration with the Product Team
* Communicates all incoming and outgoing resale items to appropriate parties
* Supports the growth of resale business, and works closely with Sales team to explore additional opportunities such as drop shipping and consignment
****Merchandising****
* Manage the product life cycle for all non-pottery products
* Makes recommendations to Web & E-Commerce Manager and Marketing Team regarding product bundling, cross-selling, and upsell opportunities to increase basket size & AOV
* Maintains appropriate workflows for new product publication and oversees those flows in collaboration with Web Manager
* Works collaboratively with warehouse staff to maintain effective systems of receiving and tracking incoming and outgoing inventory
* Communicates with fulfillment to ensure all inventory is properly counted, examined, received at Caribou; follows up with vendors as needed in regards to damages and RTV requests
* Collaborates with Web Manager on site merchandising and product placement based on knowledge of product life cycle and performance
* Sets and communicates KPIs for featured resale products, in collaboration with Director of Marketing for Content team to understand the effectiveness of their efforts
* Manages sample inventory and be sure samples are distributed to appropriate parties, within scheduled timeframe and budget accordingly
* Creates and maintains resale products in Shopify and resale vendors in ShipHero following established SOP's
* C reates and maintains resale, mixed resale and pottery sets in Shopify and ShipHero following established SOP's, supported by Sr. Sales Operations Manager
* Maintain a single source product database through the Master Product and Vendor list with current active skus, product categories/subcategories, associated vendors, lead times, purchase prices, etc.
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**Reports To**
Director of Sales
**Collaborates With**
Director of Marketing
Sales and Marketing Teams
Fulfillment
CEO
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**Direct Reports**
none
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**Measured Metrics and Review Schedule**
* Meet or exceed a 3.2 GMROI for each fiscal year measured as a trailing 12 month average
* Stay under the open-to-buy at all times
* Schedule all seasonal buying meetings at minimum of 1 season prior to product launch
* Assure all new products arrive and are shoppable in appropriate channels in time of launch moment
* Maintain up to date vendor contact list
* Submit monthly KPI report on resale product and category performance
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**Estimated Weekly Hours**
40 hours, Monday through Friday, 9am-5pm
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**Classification**
This position is full time, exempt.
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**Pay Rate**
East Fork shall pay you $68,000 annually
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**Pay Grade**
4
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**Qualifications**
* Collaborates across cultural differences
* Ability to respect and communicate across lines of cultural differences
* Ability to address conflict by assuming positive intent and seeking to understand
* Ability to embrace a mistake w/ out fault
* A commitment to center the active process of self awareness
* 3-5 years of buying experience
* Experience working with and communicating with wholesale vendors and suppliers
* Familiarity with project management software
* Functional understanding of Google Suite, specifically Google Sheets
* Experience managing a budget
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**Physical Demands**
No physical demands required of this position.
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**Company Overview**
East Fork is located in Asheville, NC and Atlanta, GA. At our heart we are makers: we produce every piece of ceramics we sell and source other objects for the home from near and far to offer a meaningful, beautiful, and personal collection of useful objects for the home.
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**What can we offer**
* Employer-subsidized health insurance + voluntary vision & dental options
* 8 Paid holidays (7 calendared and 1 floating holiday)
* 13 Days PTO on first year of employment
* 5 Days Paid Sick Leave
* Fitness Benefits - YMCA membership discount + Peerfit membership
* Company-sponsored Headspace Plus membership
* 401(K) Retirement Savings Plan w/ up to 4% match
* Employer-provided Life Insurance + voluntary options for additional limits
* 8 Weeks Paid Medical Leave, including Parental
* 50% discount on purchases of East Fork pottery + 40% discount on resale goods
* Staff Lunch provided twice a week
* $35 Cell Phone Reimbursement
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**Diversity, Equity and Inclusion**
It is important that all prospective job candidates are aware of our company valuesCompassion, Equity, Sincerity, Accountability, and Adaptive Tenacityand of our commitment to building an inclusive company culture. As a white-led organization, we acknowledge that the realities of white supremacy, hetero/cis-normativity, and patriarchy, work in tandem to oppress both people and planet; and that through our own proximity to power, we have benefitted from systemic inequity. We are committed to confronting and rectifying our privilege in service of co-creating an equitable workplacea space where people can show up authentically in mind, body, and spirit. We honor the collective sum rather than a monolithic experience to reveal a path of excellency, yours and ours. As we continue to build momentum within our anti-racist work we pledge to be intentional in crafting actions that support diversity, equity and inclusion in our framework, and we invite all East Fork teammembers to contribute to this goal.
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**Values at Work**
**Compassion**: This role is heavy with cross departmental collaboration, the Retail Buyer must be able to communicate compassionately and clearly with collaborators and colleagues while understanding goals and strategies may be different.
**Equity**: All roles and responsibilities at East Fork should be conducted through a lens of race, gender, sexual orientation, faith, ability and cultural equity. Ultimately, this means being fair. As the liaison between East Fork and our vendors, the Retail B