Junior Buyer If you love beauty, you're in the right place.
As the ultimate curator of over 100 of the most in-demand, highly innovative and boundary-pushing beauty brands, we are the go-to destination for worldwide beauty discovery.
Together through our neighbourhood stores, online presence and loyalty scheme, Space NK has built a flourishing community in which to discover beauty. The customer is at the heart of everything we do, and we will always endeavour to offer everything they need to help them explore, experiment, and enjoy our brands.
Junior Buyer (internally, this role will be titled Junior Brand Manager)
Reports To: Brand Manager
Role Overview
The Junior Buyer (Junior Brand Manager) is responsible for owning and driving the commercial performance, strategy and execution of key categories, with a particular focus on multi-brand initiatives including edits and advent.
Working closely with the Brand Manager, this role leads end-to-end delivery across product planning, supplier management and cross-functional execution. The Junior Brand Manager translates customer insight and market trends into commercially successful launches, while ensuring strong alignment across teams and timely delivery against business goals.
This role requires a balance of commercial ownership, strategic thinking, pace and operational discipline, with the Brand Manager acting as a strategic sounding board.
Key Accountabilities
- Commercial Ownership, Product Strategy & Planning
- Own and drive the commercial performance of multi-brand categories (including beauty edits and advent), with clear accountability for sales, margin and overall contribution to category growth.
- Define and execute the product pipeline strategy, identifying trends, customer needs and commercial opportunities.
- Own the end-to-end development of multi-brand edits and advent, from concept through to launch and post-launch review.
- Lead regular performance reviews, identifying actions to optimise sales, margin and customer engagement.
- Support final assortment sign-off, ensuring selections are customer-led, commercially viable and aligned to category strategy.
- Identify and deliver quick-win opportunities, bringing products to market efficiently without compromising execution quality.
- Drive improvement plans for underperforming areas, including range optimisation, pricing, and customer communication strategies.
- Ensure early visibility of costings to support strong commercial decision-making and protect margin.
- Cross-Functional Leadership & Collaboration
- Work collaboratively with Marketing, CRM, Merchandising, PR, Retail, Training and E-Commerce to deliver aligned and impactful launches.
- Partner with CRM and Marketing teams to build commercially led plans that drive customer acquisition, ATV and retention.
- Act as the central point of coordination across functions, ensuring clarity of priorities, timelines and deliverables.
- Identify and drive cross-functional improvements to enhance efficiency, communication and commercial outcomes.
- Lead and guide junior team members, ensuring clarity, accountability and effective workload management.
- Brand & Supplier Relationship Management
- Build strong, strategic relationships with brand partners and suppliers, acting as a key point of contact within Space NK.
- Lead regular performance discussions with partners, sharing insights and identifying growth opportunities.
- Collaborate with brands to develop long-term plans for edits and advent, leveraging Space NK customer insight.
- Manage end-to-end supplier onboarding, ensuring smooth setup and integration into ways of working.
- Support and, where appropriate, lead commercial negotiations to deliver strong and sustainable partnerships.
- Operational Excellence & Process Alignment
- Drive clarity and alignment across ways of working, ensuring realistic timelines and shared understanding of priorities.
- Improve visibility and transparency across costing, sampling and project status to support better decision-making.
- Ensure alignment between concept, render and final execution by working closely with suppliers on quality expectations.
- Support effective logistics and operational planning, ensuring flexibility and minimising downstream issues.
- Accountable for the following KPIs
- Category & Brand Sales: Overall, YoY and vs Budget
- New Customer Acquisition: Overall, YoY and vs Budget
- Average Transaction Value (ATV) drivers
- Newness and Exclusive Launch Performance
- Range Productivity: Sales per store, sales per SKU, sales to space productivity
- Stock Management: Stock position by category and brand, including overstocks and discontinued inventory
- Category Intake Margin vs Budget
- Support with new store opening planning and execution
- To actively adopt and embody the core company values, acting a role model for more junior members of the team
- Communication is everything
- Customer first
- We are one team
- Embrace the change
- Know & feel you belong
Skills and Experience Required
- Previous experience at Junior or Assistant Brand Manager / Buyer level
- Passion for beauty industry, brands and products
- Proactive, entrepreneurial, self-starter who can identify opportunities and pursue them
- Strong people skills with a focus and drive to build strong relationships both internally and externally
- Strong commercial acumen and savvy; comfortable with number and analytics
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Excel, Power Point and Outlook)
- Willingness to learn and try new things and openness to change
- Actively seeks feedback from others to develop
Please note that only successful candidates will be contacted.
All applicants must have the right to live and work in the UK.
If you want to find out more about us, what it is like to work for us, all about our benefits, and our pledges on Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, please visit our website.
Space NK are an equal opportunities employer.
How We Will Use Your Information
We will use the information you provide to us with your job application to help us process your application for the specific job you have applied for. If you apply speculatively, we will process your application for the job/relevant business area that you detail within your email.
Please note that our current system does not use an automated filtering system.
All applications made via the website, through a third-party website or in-store will be kept on file for a period of 12 months.
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