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About the role

Assistant Merchandiser - Outdoor & Leisure

Permanent

Up to £40,000 + Bonus + Pension + BUPA + ShareSave + 6.6 weeks holiday + Hybrid Working

Southampton, Store Support Office

We believe anyone can improve their home to make life better. From our Southampton Store Support office (SSO) we equip our stores, our people, and our whole business with everything it takes to help our millions of customers create a home they’ll love. Join us as an Assistant Merchandiser and you’ll be a big part of this.

At B&Q we have a hybrid approach to working to increase flexibility in when and where we work. For this role we are looking for someone to be able to work from our head office 3 days a week.

Key responsibilities

Work with the Category Merchandiser to curate and deliver an inspirational range that meets the needs of our customers. Within a specific sub category, you’ll use insights and analysis to maximise sales and margin (£GM & GM%) opportunities and market share across all channels, improving sales and profit density and stock efficiency.

Work alongside the Category Merchandiser to develop a category proposition that meets our customer needs, identifying opportunities and mitigating risk, whilst protecting sales, margin, stock efficiency and market share targets

• Support the Category Merchandiser in creating a compelling range hierarchy, incorporating assortment, space, inventory and fulfilment principles, which reflects the category strategy and meets the needs of our customers across all channels, delivering our vision of supporting all customers with access to DIY/Trade products
• Review and monitor subcategory performance, with the buying team, through reporting and analytics, take action to reflect changing sales and trends
• Support in managing and creating sales and budget forecasts and associated business cases, including PIRs, for specific categories, ensuring shortfalls or risks to plan are identified and addressed
• Work collaboratively with the Supply team to optimise availability, stock and sales whilst ensuring stock exit plans are in place to support range change activity (range, promotions, clearance) and are delivered to agreed targets
• Own the Clean Stock process for clearance for the category
• With the Range and Space team, identify and target areas to improve sales and profit density
• Create line level promotional and range change sales and stock forecasts for all channels
• Work collaboratively with the Commercial Planning team to ensure all products have appropriate fulfilment routes, maximising customer reach
• With the Category Merchandiser, manage the product lifecycle including range performance, identifying, and optimising trading opportunities and the delivery of range reviews
• Support the Merchandiser with the project management of small and medium range reviews, adhering to current processes and within time, cost and quality parameters
• Work closely with the category assistants to support day to day trading activities including analysis, promotional activity sign off, stock management and range planning
• Use support tools such as Yammer to share category information and respond to queries
• Conduct regular store (digital & physical), competitor and vendor visits, to increase understanding of the market and support the creation of the trading plan and inform decisions
• Manage and influence stakeholders across a range of levels, internally and externally, to support the delivery of KPIs
• Undertake other duties from time to time as may be reasonably required

Required skills & experience

• Previous experience of trading product ranges across multiple sales channels
• Numerical and analytical with strong attention to detail
• Commercially focussed with the ability to understand financial insights and translate this into key business deliverables
• Knowledge and understanding of the home improvement market and product seasonality
• Ability to understand customer insights and market trends
• Ability to drive business performance using insights and knowledge to deliver an agile trading plan.
• Ability to understand and manage complex range architecture
• Strong communicator
• Ability to build relationships at all levels
• Commercial and financial awareness
• Intermediate Microsoft Office skills, in particular Excel and PowerPoint
• Prior merchandising/ retail experience

What's in it for me?

As well as a competitive salary, our benefits package includes an award-winning pension scheme, bonus, ShareSave options, 6.6 weeks holiday, payroll giving, an Employee Assistance Programme, shopping discounts, colleague wellbeing benefits and lots more!

As part of a great team, you’ll be supported to grow and encouraged to explore new career directions within the business and the wider group. And, because you’ll be inspiring great things for our customers and the whole business, you’ll do work worth caring about.