Lead Production Merchandiser

The Role

You will lead the UK Central Purchasing team, overseeing and enabling accurate buy placements and on-time deliveries aligned with the company’s strategic objectives.

This role is ideal for an experienced production professional from the apparel industry, with a deep understanding of critical path management.

You should have proven experience in negotiating with overseas suppliers, along with strong communication skills and the ability to challenge lead times constructively.

• Lead and manage a team to ensure all lead times and ex-factory dates are reviewed, challenged, and negotiated where necessary.
• Oversee a global supply network, building and maintaining strong relationships with key partners.
• Take full accountability for your team’s timely and efficient execution of tasks, ensuring adherence to the buying calendar and alignment across global sourcing offices.
• Proactively manage factory performance to meet order specifications and delivery timelines through accurate critical path management and supplier communications.
• Work closely with the planning team to monitor supplier orders in line with capacity plans to ensure production caps are not breached.
• Be able to create and lead supplier action plans to support the recovery of delays and ensure minimal impact to the intake schedule.
• Handle supplier delays autonomously, including negotiating penalties where appropriate and escalating key intake risks to senior management with proactive solutions.
• Ratio orders at size level when required to meet specific order requirements and optimise stock flow.
• Monitor team performance through clear KPIs and ensure appropriate supplier actions are taken to maintain delivery standards.
• Lead the weekly buy process, driving agility by challenging repeat lead times and working closely with Sourcing and Quality teams to resolve outstanding actions.
• Support the business in managing supplier contracts, including payment terms, debits, and discounts.
• Support the Head of Purchasing and Head of Sourcing in delivering key sourcing and planning strategies and proactively lead cross-functional projects to drive operational excellence and system optimisation.
• Ensure adherence to buying calendar deadlines through strong stakeholder engagement.
• Foster strong relationships with internal departments, serving as a dependable and collaborative team member.
• Identify and implement opportunities for process improvements and system enhancements.
• Manage and develop others, provide leadership to direct reports, ensuring delivery of team priorities and supporting their professional growth.
• Support continuous improvement by contributing to wider business projects and initiatives, adapting quickly to support the needs of a fast-paced, evolving environment.

• Ideally Degree Educated, preferably in Fashion or Supply Chain.
• Ideally someone with a minimum of 6 years industry experience – retail/brand or supplier
• Experienced in production processes within the fashion sector
• Knowledgeable in the fashion buying cycle and critical path
• Experienced working with a global supply base across multi-categories
• Previously experienced in leading others to success
• Advanced in Excel with the ability to analyse and manipulate data to provide clear reporting updates
• Confident working with high volumes of data
• Highly accurate with good attention to detail
• An excellent communicator with an enthusiastic and engaging manner
• Proactive in your approach to resolving issues in a timely and effective manner
• Highly organized with the ability to prioritise workload effectively
• Self-motivated with a willingness to learn new skills and demonstrate a can-do approach
• Experienced in the use of PLM / Siv or Looker would be desirable

• 25 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, we also offer a holiday buying scheme
• An additional day off to celebrate your Birthday
• Family is massively important to us, so we have a broad range of family-friendly working policies in place, including enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
• Company Pension scheme
• All employees are covered by our Life Assurance policy whilst working  feel it’s important…