subject: How to start off your career as a successful retail buyer [print this page] How to start off your career as a successful retail buyer
A buyer can have a huge influence on the direction of the business and the type of products that they sell. Therefore, this role is often perceived as fairly exciting and glamorous. If you are hoping to pursue this career then you can expect to travel to different places so that you can look at different stock. Retail buyers need to posses the ability to pick up on new opportunities and potential products.
If you want to become a retail buyer then you need to try to really understand what customers want. Think about their needs and what motivates them to buy a product. One of the best things you can do to ensure you buy products that your customers want is to conduct extensive research. A well conducted, focused research study is invaluable and can generate good sales results if applied correctly. A significant amount of time needs to be spent thinking about the right questions to ask and how to structure the answers. Some of the things that a retail buyer might research are things like retail industry trends, consumer demand and customer needs.
It is absolutely vital for candidates hoping to become great retail buyers to have an extensive knowledge of the market. A good way to start your career might be to get some experience working in a shop as a shop assistant or a stock checker. This will give you a chance to see how a shop is run and witness the arrival of different stock.
One of the ways that you can become a successful retail buyer is to have a good idea of how the market might change before it happens. You need to be able to order the most current stock and do it before your competitors pick up on emerging industry trends. I you do choose to get some work experience, then this might be a good time to think about stock changes. One of the things you can do is try to predict which stock will come in for the next season and this will test your industry knowledge.
