The Buying team at River Island play a key role in realising the commercial opportunities created by our unique designs across all of our channels. This is achieved though effective range planning, awareness of key commercial data and customer trends, excellent supplier relations and internal networks, and execution of the Buying Strategy to deliver sales and profit plans.  The Buyers Admin Assistant supports this through the smooth running of the critical path through the whole Buying cycle, from placing purchase orders, creating and maintaining the critical path, attending fit sessions and maintaining the sample library.

Key Accountabilities

• Efficient and accurate order and invoice management, including maintenance of supplier base details and fabric orders
• Effective sample management, including labelling, working with suppliers, maintaining the development tracker and ensuring the correct samples are available to support meetings
• Supporting fit meetings with relevant paperwork and rails
• Co-ordinating labelling and ticketing to a high standard
• Monitor and review Critical Path, ensuring dates and deliveries on track and highlighting risks to the Assistant Buyer/Buyer
• Support weekly trading reviews, updating and providing information to the Buying team as needed
• A working knowledge of competitors, key market trends, customers and channels; produce comp shops with recommendations to positively impact performance
• Through a working knowledge of sustainability practises and ethical trading, ensure that work duties are managed responsibly so as not to have any detrimental impact throughout the supply chain
• Work cross functionally with Core Merchandising team for effective ways of working and internal teams (Ecommerce, Wholesale, Visual Merchandising) to provide full and correct collections for meetings 

Key experience required:

• This is an entry level role so previous experience in Retail or as BAA is desirable, but not essential; a track record that demonstrates good work ethic is a must
• No specific qualifications are required for this role, just the ability to learn quickly and apply that learning

Job role competencies:

• Good verbal and numerical reasoning skills
• Intermediate MS Office skills
• Computer literate, able to learn new systems quickly
• Highly organised and pro-active, good time management skills
• Collaborative, with strong communication and interpersonal skills
• Good commercial and market awareness
• Disciplined and conscientious, results oriented
• Resilient and adaptable with the ability to multitask 
• Curious, continuous learning mindset
• Takes initiative
• A keen interest in Product and the River Island brand is a must