Buyer - Dry Grocery

Meijer•Grand Rapids, MI

1d•Onsite

About The Position

This position owns the assortment, pricing strategy, planogram, marketing, and managing of the vendor relationship to deliver the financial plan. The role drives the strategic direction of the area with the goal to make Meijer the most compelling place for customers to shop by focusing on Pricing, Assortment, Brands, Marketing, and Store Presentation. It involves utilizing internal and external market information to anticipate trends and future customer needs, visiting stores regularly to understand assortments, pricing, and store presentation, and working with the Merchandise Financial Planner on the financial plan. The Buyer is responsible for the overall direction and performance of a merchandising category, determining its position profile and role. They drive category reviews, develop and approve master and version planograms, and determine pricing strategies that maintain Meijer’s pricing integrity, drive sales, and direct margin dollars. The role also includes reviewing pricing analytics, ensuring competitive pricing, determining promotional strategies, collaborating with the Inventory Manager, evaluating marketing effectiveness, and approving markdown strategies. Furthermore, the Buyer negotiates with vendors for markdown support or returns, conducts strong, action-oriented analysis of business performance, and uses this analysis to drive assortment, marketing, pricing, and store placement decisions. They utilize industry information to drive brand and item selection, focusing on competing with various retail formats, and drive category designations to meet financial targets. The position also involves mentoring, training, and developing Business Analysts and Associate Buyers.

Requirements

Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree; or equivalent retail experience.
3-7 years of experience in a Buying role
6+ years of experience in the retail industry
Buying, inventory management and analysis experience required.
Knowledge of the market, retail business and customers.
Knowledge of business drivers (e.g. pricing, promotion, assortment).
Financial Planning skills.
Negotiations skills.
Sense of product trends.
Enthusiasm, Initiative and passion for retail.
Office computer skills; able to learn company systems and tools, preference for Microsoft application experience.

Responsibilities

Drives the strategic direction of the area with the goal to make Meijer the most compelling place for our customers to shop by focusing on Pricing, Assortment, Brands, Marketing, and Store Presentation.
Utilize internal and external market information to anticipate trends and future customer needs to drive brand and item selection.
Visits stores (both Meijer and competition) regularly to proactively understand assortments, pricing and store presentation.
Works with the Merchandise Financial Planner on the financial plan.
Responsible for the overall direction and performance of a merchandising category.
Determines category position profile and assigns a role to each category.
Drives the category review and makes the recommendations based on analysis.
Works with team to develop and approves master and version planograms.
Determines pricing strategy for category / product that maintains Meijer’s pricing integrity, drives sales, and direct margin dollars.
Reviews pricing analytics with Pricing team to determine optimal pricing.
The primary owner that ensures Meijer is competitively priced.
Determines promotional (advertising or price) based on competition and seasonality.
Collaborates with Inventory Manager on inventory needs to support promotional strategy.
Evaluates marketing effectiveness (lift over norm in sales and DM$) and leads changes to drive increases over prior year.
Approves markdown strategy that ties to plan.
Informs and elevates markdowns that do not tie to plan to MM and PM.
Negotiates with vendors for markdown support or returns.
Responsible for strong, action-oriented analysis of business in season, post season and long-term planning of category.
Uses analysis to drive assortment, marketing, pricing and store placement decisions.
Utilizes industry information to drive brand and item selection focusing on competing with both mass, big box and specialty retail.
Drives the Grow, Maintain, Downtrend category designations to create bottoms up plan to meet total area financial targets.
Mentors, trains and develops Business Analysts and Associate Buyers