Senior Ecommerce Vendor Manager

Job Summary

Remote role based out of Dubai, UAE. Responsible for evaluating, curating, promoting, and growing brands/products in the assigned category and cultivating strong vendor partnerships that result in mutually beneficial opportunities to grow both revenue and profit. Sources new suppliers and manages assortment relevant to category, trend, and team objectives. Makes merchandising decisions for large volume accounts, focusing on assortment and product strategy complementary to iHerb’s overall global strategy while expanding the catalog with relevant brands and products in the assigned market.

Identifies and onboards regional brands and unlocks logistical methods to allow regional sourcing of global brands to reduce lead time, save expense and substitute locally approved products.

• Work closely with the Global Director and team to ensure alignment on business strategies, short- and long-term growth objectives.
• Collaborate with the in‑market team and Region Leaders to maximize market opportunities.
• Directly responsible for key category metrics for new and existing brands, new products, pricing, gross margin, promotions and product life cycle, while seeking opportunities for improvement.
• Understand and navigate supply chain complexities to ensure proper and legal buying methods.
• Partner with Compliance and Regulatory departments on catalog additions to ensure legitimacy.
• Procure directly from manufacturers or approved distributors.
• Negotiate with vendors to secure exceptional everyday pricing, marketing and promotional budgets, special opportunity buys, growth incentives including rebates and accruals, delivery and payment terms for large volume accounts.
• Foster relationships with large volume existing and new vendors to drive sales, product innovation, margin growth and promotional support, maintaining regular communication to ensure clear understanding of short- and long-term goals and capabilities.
• Negotiate contracts, evaluate products, resolve quality issues, address customer service questions and create and maintain supplier and product databases.
• Drive the new product and brand onboarding and maintenance process to ensure timely addition to the market.
• Calculate, maintain and evaluate cost, pricing and product adjustments in the system to ensure desired mark‑ups and margin.
• Coordinate with Inventory Management and Planning Team to manage inventory turns, vendor forecasts, new item projections, service level, order cycles, rebate and marketing programs, special opportunity buys and general supply chain practices.
• Develop promotional co‑op activities that are profitable and highly effective in conjunction with Marketing.
• Create, review and utilize reports to enable in‑depth analysis of category successes and challenges.
• Comply with company policies and procedures, including safety, business ethics and standards of conduct.
• May cultivate, direct and support Assistant Buyers, enabling them to further develop and grow with tools for success.

• Strong, successful and proven negotiating skills.
• Strong analytical, data management and decision‑making abilities.
• Strong mathematical skills with an understanding of retail pricing concepts.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills with people at all levels of the organization and external contacts.
• Great attention to detail, highly organized with strong project management skills.
• Ability to handle multiple tasks, problem‑solve and prioritize with an awareness of importance and deadlines.

• Experience with Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
• Experience with Google Business Suite (Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Forms) preferred.
• Experience with WMS, EDI, SAP, Asana and Tableau a plus.

Generally requires a minimum of five (5) years of progressive experience in buying or a directly related role with equivalent responsibilities, preferably in an e‑commerce environment with natural products experience a plus.

Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Merchandising or related field preferred, or a combination of education and equivalent work experience.