Physical Retail, Associate Merchant

Wayfair’s Physical Retail team is seeking an Associate Merchant to help drive Wayfair’s physical retail agenda.  We believe there is a white space in the brick-and-mortar market and an opportunity to create a differentiated retail experience that showcases the breadth and depth of our catalog. The Associate Merchant will play a key role in the overall Physical Retail Merchandising Team that will help craft and execute Wayfair’s strategy as we stand up and scale stores across North America.

What You'll Do

In the Associate Merchant role you will develop business strategies and seasonal assortment plans to maximize sales and profits for your department. You will support merchandising team functions for the Wayfair physical retail location(s). You will be responsible for ensuring merchandising operational excellence in order to deliver best in class presentation of our assortment to our customers, as well as collaborating with our supplier partners and internal stakeholders to drive sales productivity and profitability, and ensure customer satisfaction, in our physical retail business.

 

• Execute and manage department and class level assortment based on overall department objectives. Maintain the shelf space strategy and iterate on assortment as business direction evolves
• Oversee daily management of SKU health and auditing for accuracy
• Leverage data to build credibility with internal and external partners with recommendations to scale business and improve overall customer experience in close partnership with your manager
• Support and maintain relationships with key suppliers to deliver on category assortment needs such as fulfilling assortment gaps, managing inventory and general merchandising improvements to products 
• Challenge the status quo and always be on the lookout for ways to streamline and improve the efficiency of existing processes while effectively managing multiple stakeholders
• Analyze core business KPI’s, garner insights and partner closely with manager & cross-functional teams on inventory, merchandising, and operations to drive business results.
• Drive market research opportunities for category growth, utilizing competitive analysis, in market shopping, as well as internal performance monitoring as data points
• Attend relevant category trade shows, drive trade show preparation for the Furniture team, and travel to key shopping markets for competitive insights and store visits as needed 

 

What You'll Need

• 3+ years of experience within an e-commerce or corporate retail organization preferred. Preferably experience in buying/retail merchandising or retail home furnishing planning
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage and prioritize multiple projects at once; you don’t miss the details and can work autonomously and with partners to drive projects and tasks to completion 
• A strong interest in building a career in buying and/or supplier relationship management
• A passion or knowledge of industry trends, style and product design 
• Ability to understand a brand vision, customer base and financial objectives and how to bring that to life through the product assortment and operational excellence
• Ability to cut data and think critically about the business; ability to understand and interpret sales and performance trends and apply learning to the business  
• Excellent communication skills with bias towards “answer first communication”, both written and verbal and the ability to influence cross-functionally. 
• A personable and energetic communicator, eager to build relationships with new business partners - both internally and externally
• Ability to communicate directly with external suppliers. Ability to “hit the ground running” – a self-starter capable of achieving specific target goals
• Ability to perform work onsite in our Boston, MA corporate office

 

Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities

Wayfair is fully committed to providing equal opportunities for all individuals, including individuals with disabilities. As part of this commitment, Wayfair will make reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of qualified individuals with disabilities, unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on business operations. If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please let us know by completing our Accomodations for Applicants form.

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