Assistant Buyer

Blue Ruby is an established Canadian retailer with a deep history of providing everyday luxury jewellery to our clientele. We are an industry leader in the jewellery marketplace featuring beautiful and unique collections by local and international jewellery designers. As a locally owned company beautiful and unique with 11 retail locations in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland, we are proud of the community we have built with our customers, our designers, and our employees.

**The Opportunity**

As the Assistant Buyer, you are responsible for administrative support to the Senior Buy Team. You work closely with vendors and maintain positive relationships while negotiating specs, pricing, and deadlines. Internally you assist with inventory management through re-orders of core items, inventory allocation, inter-store transfers and managing markdown strategies. You are enthusiastic and detail-oriented with a commitment to completing all tasks in a timely, professional manner. You are able to work independently and prioritize job duties, as well as prepare cost analyses and competitive retail strategies.

**Responsibilities**:
**Forecast**
- Assist the Buyer with research sourcing new vendors, trend forecasting and assessment of our competitors locally and internationally.
- Monitor all current wholesale/retail vendor websites for new arrivals, promotions, seasonal sale and discontinued items and report any changes to the Buy Team.
- Monitor sales and margin performance for categories, vendors and items weekly, monthly and seasonally reporting to the Buyer.

**Buy**
- Update vendor sell-through reports as directed for buy appointments and buy trips to ensure data captured contains last received date of goods and seasonal performance.
- Attend buy appointments as requested to document vendor communication and action items; communicate vendor notes to the buy team post appointment.
- Contribute to establishing, maintaining and building strong vendor relationships.

**Analyze**
- Process inventory sell-through reporting weekly, monthly and seasonally or as directed by the Buyer for peak business cycles and event driven sales cycles.
- Analyze weekly, monthly and seasonal sales reporting and flag the Buyer on vendor performance, item performance, category performance, trends in sales, and recommendation for re-orders, consolidation of inventory, sell-through concerns and recommended markdowns.
- Process core vendor and category sell-through and prepare reorders for the Buyer’s review and submit upon Buyer’s direction.

**Stock Management**
- Monitor stock levels and initiate weekly and seasonal inter-store transfers to manage our inventory assortments between store locations in order to maximize our sales to achieve seasonal targets.

**Connect**
- Prepare and communicate vendor product knowledge, fashion trends, merchandising and display directives to the merchandisers and retail teams through memos, images, social media references and in-store meetings and events as directed by the Buyer.
- Introduce Blue Ruby vendors to our Social Media team to establish communication and partnerships for product launch in-store and online.
- Communicate the vendor merchandising directive, including all branded merchandising supplies, to enhance the brand experience in-store and online.

**Additional Responsibilities**
- Assist in improving current systems and reporting analysis in an effort to improve inventory distribution and sales performance.
- Attend and contribute to weekly Product meetings or as required.
- To be flexible and assume extra responsibilities as required.

**Qualifications**
- Minimum 3+ years of professional experience in a similar position and industry
- Post Secondary Education in a related field
- Excellent communication skills both written and verbal
- Detail oriented, organized and able to prioritize and multi-task
- Computer proficiency with intermediate knowledge of excel
- Proven experience in leader roles and project management
- Strong analytical skills with experience in report analysis
- Able to be flexible and adaptable to situations
- Previous experience maintaining vendor relations
- Knowledge and experience working with brokers
- Experience as a Purchasing Assistant or Junior Buyer within the retail industry is an asset
- Knowledge and experience of the fashion and lifestyle retail industry

**Job Types**: Full-time, Permanent

**Benefits**:

- Dental care
- Extended health care
- Flexible schedule
- Flextime
- Paid time off
- Store discount
- Vision care
- Work from home

Schedule:

- 8 hour shift
- Day shift
- Monday to Friday

Work Location: One location