Buyer – Clothing and Helmets: Balfe's Bikes

At Balfe’s it’s all about people. And bikes! It’s the passion, energy and enthusiasm of all of our colleagues throughout the business, which makes Balfe’s a great place to work.

Joining Balfe’s means you’ll be working with like-minded people, and you will have opportunities to develop your skills and experience, and plenty of career progression if you want it.

Buyer – Clothing and Helmets

Reporting to the Head Buyer

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Balfe’s Bikes is proud to work with market leading bike brands across all categories of cycling, from a child’s first experience on two wheels right through to competitive athletes seeking their optimum performance. Working as a Buying Assistant, you will work as part of a team to deliver an industry leading range of bikes for our customers.

As a key and leading role within the Buying team you need to develop exciting, innovative, and unique ranges which are customer focussed, along with careful supplier selection and management, pricing analysis and planned promotional activity, to deliver the required commercial business targets. Working alongside the merchandising team, you will provide input into previous sales trends to aid successful forecasting of future demand to maximise availability and profit. Maintaining product lifecycle management and regular pricing reviews will ensure products remain competitive.

Responsibilities

Products/Ranging

• Responsible for product selection/ranging of all items across Clothing & Helmets
• Ensure that overall range selection matches the company strategic direction and covers all customer profiles, the correct pricing architecture and strong brand representation.
• Maximise sales/margin strategies through ranging, pricing and promotional activity based on detailed sales analysis and trends along with market data.
• Make reactive and proactive trading decisions on ranging, pricing, and deal mechanics
• Maintaining full product lifecycle management including pro-actively discontinuing and marking down to clear.
• Support the Merchandising team in regular stock replenishment and forecasting of future demand from suppliers to ensure maximum availability is maintained both in stores and online whilst also following scheduled internal delivery routines to stores.
• Attend trade fairs, in the UK and overseas, to keep up to date with market trends and build relationships with supplier base.

Supplier management

• Develop strong supplier relationships to secure the best commercial terms and ranges.
• Engage with the key suppliers creating true partnerships, sharing market and sales information to build forward looking relationships, ranges and optimising tactical trading opportunities.
• Regularly review supplier base, streamlining where possible to ensure efficiencies throughout the supply chain.
• Work with the Merchandising team in setting the budgeted sales, stock, and margin targets/phasing for the financial year.
• Process orders with suppliers to maximize profitability and margin.

Building relationships

• Work alongside the Merchandising team to develop the department level strategy to deliver the sales, stock, and margin targets for the company.
• Manage cross functional links with Marketing, Ecommerce and Retail teams to ensure the category level strategy is understood, delivered, and supported in full.
• Work with the Ecommerce team to ensure all products are visible online with high quality content and merchandised to maximise sales.
• Collaborate with other buying teams to deliver aligned product ranges for key customer demographics and product disciplines.
• Develop feedback channels from stores and other internal departments, implementing and communicating any actions
• Support internal communications to drive sales and margin.

Knowledge & Skills

• Experience as a Buyer within the high street retail environment who can develop and deliver their own customer centric department strategy to meet agreed commercial targets and business objectives.
• Highly numerate and analytical, proficient in excel and great attention to detail.
• Ability to work to tight deadlines whilst working proactively and managing own workload.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to present facts, opinions, and proposals persuasively to colleagues, Senior Management team and Directors, instilling confidence and securing buy in.
• Demonstrates resilience, maintains emotional control, and presents a calm, composed image.

Note: This job description is not exhaustive and will be subject to periodic review. It may be amended to meet the changing needs of the business. The post-holder will be expected to participate in this process, and we would aim to reach an agreement on any changes.

Our Values

Passion: We live and breathe cycling, and we’re here to inspire a lifelong love of riding in every cyclist

Knowledge: We share our expertise to empower every rider with the confidence to enjoy every journey

Community: Cycling connects us all, and we foster a welcoming space where every rider belongs

Teamwork: No egos. Just collaboration. Working together to support our customers and each other.

Honesty: Trust is everything. We’re always open, transparent and committed to doing the right thing.