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Check out one of the coolest Ecommerce Buyer jobs around!
We are working with Quibids in their search for a number of Buyers, including this Buyer – Sports and Recreation. QuiBids.com is an online entertainment retail auction website that launched in October of 2009. Its mission is to redefine shopping by providing the best deals possible for its customers with a unique, fun and exciting online shopping experience.
It’s pretty awesome.
Quibids auctions off HDTVs, MacBooks, smart phones, gaming consoles, digital cameras, a variety of gift cards to many popular stores, various kitchen appliances, and much more by operating a “pay-to-participate” business model: Each bid costs just $0.60 and are available in what are known as Bid Packs. QuiBids allows time for everyone to have the option to think about whether he/she wants to bid on an item. It uses 20 second/15 second/10 second progressions; this is essentially the internet auction equivalent of going once, going twice, sold!
All auctions start off and as they gain more attention and bids, the timer increment goes down to 15 and then finally 10 seconds. If a user does not win an auction, he/she can choose to utilize the Buy Now option, which is where the user can purchase the item at retail minus the cost of bids placed in that particular auction. Here’s a quick video explaining how the site works …
QuiBids is available in eight markets: US, CA, AU, UK, FR, DE, Austria and Italy. It prides itself in being the beacon of moral and ethical business practices in its industry and defines success through the creation of long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with its customers.
About the Role:
QuiBids is currently looking for a talented individual to join its team as a Buyer – Sports and Recreation.
The Buyer role requires a high-energy, self-starter with strong business judgment, acute analytics, and strong relationship building skills to drive the ownership within their areas of category responsibilities. There is an expectation that the Buyer will demonstrate the ability to drive towards a successful product assortment and develop a track record of successful negotiation and overall relationship building and management. Ultimately, the Buyer will grow and develop a smart assortment to support Quibids’ multi-tier business units.
The Buyer is a key member of the team responsible for driving the top and bottom line of the P&L and managing vendor relationships, deal negotiations, and merchandising within the category. Gaining hands on knowledge and expertise of the competitive landscape, learning to influence and leverage internal and external management and jumping on key trends and opportunities will be key to this individual’s long term success in this role. In addition, the Buyer will have broad scope responsibilities in terms of influencing the online customer experience by partnering with the Strategic Sourcing, Site Merchandising, and Business Development teams.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: This is our first project for Quibids, and based on my 90-minute kickoff call with the hiring committee, this business is run by sharp people. Quibids’ auction model (explained above) has been extremely successful, and now the firm is taking its unique spin on ecommerce to the next level with a new “gamified” site launching in February 2014. The new site is now in private beta, and having heard the concept in detail, its UX sounds really addictive.
These six buyer roles will support both Quibids.com as well as the new site. Given that we are not the exclusive recruiters on this project, I’m limiting my public analysis of these roles, the client, and its industry. However: That doesn’t mean we don’t have dozens of pages of proprietary intel to share with qualified candidates. Just email Richard Pirkle for the files and he’ll hook you up.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Ability to build and leverage strong vendor relationships.
- Ability to manage multiple projects, including work prioritization, planning, and task delegation.
- Demonstrate the ability to think both strategically and tactically.
- Demonstrate the ability to take ownership of and drive business performance.
- Develop strong negotiation skills and vendor management experience.
- Work with Fulfillment on what products are available and able to fulfill via spreadsheets.
- Oversee direction of products.
- Analyze and maintain product performance.
- Actively cut products in order to achieve the right balance of selection and quality in order to optimize auction performance.
- Cross check Quibids’ “buy it now” pricing by utilizing external and internal reporting, communicate with vendors about pricing information, seek out better margin with various vendors if Quibids is not getting good pricing and review COGS change category to make sure Quibids’ pricing is correct and not being auctioned incorrectly.
- Communicate with vendors for stocking information and work with Customer Support for items that are backordered.
Pricing Negotiations
- Price Negotiation:
- negotiate pricing on new skus
- negotiate and manage pricing on current skus
- negotiate and leverage vendors directly through distribution pass-through or special SR promotions
- COGS Exception Report:
- manage daily
Vendor Relationship Development:
- Vendor Relationship Development:
- Conduct strategic conversations on sku expansion
- Streamline access to more skus
- Layer on secondary suppliers
- Vendor Program Relations:
- Ongoing contract management
- updated contracts
- terms and early pay discounts
- line of credit
- Ongoing operational compliance:
- in-stock rate
- allocated inventory
- QuiBids shipping account
- defectives-replacements
- Brand Authorization
- map agreements
- marketing fund opportunities
- Accrual and Straight Pay Coop, VIR, IR
Inventory Management:
- WOS Management
- manage backorder supply listing reports
- mange PR
- manage supply status’s based on daily inventory feeds
- Manage Secondary Suppliers
- Purchase Orders
- Forecast
- Replenish and
- Manage owned and earmarked inventory
Ticket Maintenance:
- Customer Support
- Account Payable
Assortment Planning:
- Develop and execute optimal category strategy and product assortment.
- Conduct through competitive price overview at a category and product level.
- Produce weekly reports with a high level of accuracy, including analyzing reports and making recommendations for next steps within your area of responsibility.
- Oversee and support vendor sourcing and product set-up within your area of responsibility – partnering with Strategic Sourcing and Site Merchandising to get the job done.
Cross-Functional Relationship Development:
- Customer Support – provide expertise in your categories to resolve issues.
- IT – facilitate suggestions on how to streamline and add efficiencies to Admin and the catalog.
- Strategic Sourcing – coordinate onboarding and transition of new vendors.
UPDATE: THIS SEARCH IS CLOSED.
PS – If you’re thinking about changing jobs this year (though us or anyone else), you might want to check out this post on why even TOP candidates get rejected.
