Marley Arango: Associate Buyer, Footwear in Salt Lake City, UT

Own 60+ brands in a wide variety of adult and youth footwear categories; Birkenstock, Teva, Columbia, Brooks and Toms are a few of the larger volume driving brands in my portfolio. In first 12 months, I grew my book of business by 14% or +$1.2M to annual sales of $12.2M. In 2020, my sales are tracking +5% YoY, despite pandemic and political challenges posed to retail industries. Manage brand sales: stock ratios by brand and category, actively review sales to identify missed opportunity and fuel growth categories through both pre-season and at-once orders based on OTB, track brand metrics and adapt to reach financial goals. Monitor current on industry trends, continually researching new products and vendors/suppliers in order to identify white spaces in assortment, update product mix using industry insights on each seasonal pre-book, support brand changes based on projections to meet financial goals. Partner with vendors to negotiate terms, ship flow, SMU styles and facilitate marketing opportunities for key styles and programs with cross functional teams; review and negotiate selling contracts, 3P online partnerships, COI and various tax forms per new vendor acquisition and onboarding process.

Negotiate terms to improve margin, secure exclusive access to end of life product lists with key brands, use key retail math and merchandising formulas to determine cost needed and potential profit in a highly time-sensitive and inventory competitive context. Monitor current on industry trends, continually researching new products and vendors to develop a robust book of brands, create an exciting product mix of sale and discontinued product to grow the business based on projections and chase identified white spaces in the off-price online market. Work with Visual Merch Team on the coordination of items to be featured in site collections where inventory supports demand sales, utilizing seasonal insights to manage and plan assortment for future collections on Steepandcheap.com.

Oversee order management through persistent vendor communication and data driven decision-making, update open orders to free up OTB for fill in inventory as needed. Fall 2017 season total impact of $1.8 million edited from open POs as direct result of action on past due orders, Develop SOP materials to train entire merchandising department and refine functionality of price-matching tool before and throughout Cyber Week, earning a Q4 Stand Up award [company wide] in December 2017. Provide in-depth buyer support via sell-through reporting, hindsight reporting, and other ad hoc analyses to identify vendor shipping accuracy and performance