Buyer, Custom Home - San Diego SSC

Event Network•San Diego, CA

About The Position

The Buyer, Custom Home develops bespoke, location-specific giftable products for guests and partners, including soft home textiles, tabletop items, collectible ornaments, and figurines. The role translates broader content direction into compelling assortments and balances creative vision, aesthetics, quality, and sales objectives. It also explores innovative, on-trend product types that can drive business and scale through custom execution across cultural attraction and lifestyle retail locations. The Buyer owns product discovery, development, vendor management, and buying execution within established categories and portfolio strategies. The role uses data and market intelligence to inform decisions and ensures products are brand-right, financially sound, on time, and ready to perform. The Buyer works closely with Division Merchandise Managers, General Merchandise Managers, Creative, Planning, Product Development, and support teams, and shares successful products, vendor capabilities, market intelligence, and learnings across the enterprise.

Requirements

3–5 years of experience in buying, merchandising, product development, retail, or a related field, including experience managing assortments, developing products, working with vendors, analyzing performance, and coordinating cross-functional initiatives; equivalent combinations of experience and demonstrated capability may be considered.
Strong project-management skills, including organizing priorities, managing timelines, tracking dependencies, and advancing multiple initiatives.
Proficiency with Monday.com or similar project-management platforms, including maintaining project status, ownership, milestones, and deliverables.
Advanced Excel skills, including building reports, maintaining data, analyzing performance, identifying trends, and translating findings into actionable recommendations.
Strong understanding of merchandising, sourcing, vendor management, product development, negotiation, cost analysis, and cross-functional collaboration.
Proficiency creating polished presentations in Canva and PowerPoint to communicate product strategies, assortments, financial insights, and recommendations.

Responsibilities

Source, develop, and manage product assortments aligned with portfolio strategy, partner identity, guest needs, category direction, and financial goals.
Discover products, vendors, brands, materials, trends, and market opportunities through research, competitive shopping, trade shows, showrooms, stores, and industry relationships.
Bring a clear point of view to assortment reviews, respond constructively to editing and direction, and develop custom or proprietary products with Creative and Product Development.
Build vendor relationships and lead day-to-day sourcing, product development, negotiation, and commercial communication for assigned categories.
Negotiate cost, terms, minimums, lead times, delivery, and quality within established category strategy.
Own execution from approved concept through order placement, partnering with Assistant Buyers and Merchandise Coordinators to ensure accurate information, clear handoffs, and timely follow-through.
Escalate material opportunities or risks to the DMM.
Monitor sales, per-cap, cost of goods, inventory productivity, SKU and category performance, and new-product results.
Use performance data to identify opportunities and recommend actions.
Partner with Planning and Replenishment to understand inventory risks and tradeoffs, balancing guest relevance, differentiation, cost, quality, timing, and productivity.
Partner with GMMs, Senior Merchandise Managers, and the DMM to understand strategy, partner context, assortment guardrails, product priorities, vendor opportunities, negotiation priorities, and enterprise leverage.
Collaborate with the Creative Center of Excellence, Planning, Purchasing Operations, and Store teams.
Share successful products, vendor capabilities, market intelligence, and learnings so strong ideas can scale where relevant.
Organize priorities, manage timelines, track dependencies, and move multiple initiatives forward.
Travel as needed for stores, markets, trade shows, vendors, and product development.