Assistant Buyer

Cole Beauty is hiring an Assistant Buyer. This is a role for someone who wants to become a buyer.

You'll own the buying administration across all four of our brands — and alongside it, start taking on the commercial work. Analysing what's selling. Comparing costs. Drafting supplier briefs. Bringing recommendations rather than raw information.

You'll work directly with our Buyer, and with suppliers, manufacturers and freight forwarders in the UK and overseas.

It's a broad role, deliberately. You won't be handed one narrow category and left there. If you're currently doing buying admin and finding the remit tighter than you'd like, this is the widening.

There's full training, with a documented process guide for every part of the role, and a clear route on to Buyer.

• Owning the day-to-day buying administration across four brands: purchase orders, deliveries, supplier follow-ups, trackers and product data.
• Building cost sheets, and working out landed costs and margins.
• Turning weekly sales data into buying insight — spotting whats selling and whats not, and feeding that into what we buy next.
• Arranging international shipments end to end: sourcing and comparing freight quotes, and recommending the option you'd pick.
• Working with our contract manufacturers and third-party logistics partners to keep production and stock moving.
• Running the sample process and supporting new product development, from first brief through to final sign-off.
• Researching competitors and market trends, and bringing ideas into range development, including gifting.
• Keeping projects on the critical path, and raising anything that looks at risk early.

• Around one to two years
  in buying, merchandising, supply chain or similar. If you ve been doing buying admin and you re ready for more responsibility, that s exactly the profile.
• Real attention to detail.A lot of this job is data, and it needs to be right.
• Comfortable with numbers
  — building a cost comparison, working out a margin, and explaining what it means.
• Confident in Excel.
• Happy dealing with suppliers directly
  , including chasing and pushing back when you need to.
• Able to run several things at once
  and decide what matters most.
• Curious about why decisions get made
  , not just what needs doing.
• Nice to have, not essential:experience in beauty, personal care, FMCG or gifting
  · an ERP system, ideally Net Suite
  · exposure to international shipping and customs paperwork

• £26,000–£29,000
  , depending on experience
• 75% staff discount
  across all four brands
• 25 days holiday
  , plus bank holidays
• Company bonus
• Full training, and a documented process guide for every part of the role.
• A clear route on to Buyer, at the pace you earn it.
• On-site parking, Cheadle.

Cole Beauty was founded in 2007 by Tracy Mort MBE, and makes bath, body and home products under four brands:
Grace Cole, The Retreat, Boutique
and
The Luxury Bathing Company
. Our products sit in national retailers, independents and our own channels, in the UK and internationally.

We work closely with English suppliers and keep our supply chain as local as we can, which means real visibility over how our products get made.

Our buying function covers the whole product journey — first idea, development, production, finished stock arriving in the warehouse. You ll be close to those decisions rather than several steps removed from them, and what you work on ends up on shelves.