Online Assistant Trading Manager

The key responsibility of this role is to meet and maximise divisional sales and operations under the guidance of the Trading Manager. This involves using core retail KPIs and trading analytics to drive the division, coordination of visual merchandising strategies and to continuous evaluation and challenging to the customer journey. The role requires the candidate to support the Trading Manager as well as to manage and oversee the work of the Online Administrator. The role requires an efficient professional who is detail oriented, accurate, highly organised, flexible, with good commercial awareness and ability to analyse figures and data. The candidate should demonstrate composure and resilience in handling multiple competing priorities in a fast paced environment.

PRODUCT

• Improves data quality by resolving issues with Merchandise Data and Buying teams. Recommends additional product attributes that can be used as filters on site or provide more information in the production or publishing process.
• Assess productivity of the only range at the end of each season and provides recommendations to the Buying team and Trade manager on how to maximise product exposure and conversion in future seasons
• Manages production priorities with the Studio team to deliver key product to site in a timely manner.
• Manages the stock transfer process via deliveries to Studio team to ensure product moves through production flow without delays. Manages the sample process for applicable brands. Manages the retail set processes for applicable categories.

TRADING AND BUSINESS ACUMEN

• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of Harrods divisional positioning in the greater market, as well as seasonal product and brand trends among competitors. Work closely with the Online Content team to maximise coverage to relevant brands and categories.
• Conduct analysis of trade on a weekly basis, providing feedback and action points to the Trading Manager on longer term KPI’s and the potential risk and opportunities to achieve sales targets.
• Lead Administrator and support Trade Manager in weekly sales reporting to senior stakeholders in store Buying teams, Concession brand teams and Online Marketing Team.
• Regular assessment of divisional Out of Stocks and Returns rates, challenging he impact of product availability on trade and providing feedback to store Buying teams as well as Trading Manager.
• Pricing: Builds competitor pricing awareness and regional expertise. Performs weekly competitors checks for Recommended Retail Pricing adherence and updates trackers.
• Supports the Trade Manager in a monthly reporting and weekly forecasting for divisional performance. Is familiar with divisional budget at brand and category level and uses them to benchmark performance and plan trading activity and on-site coverage. Understands phasing variances on brands not included in the promotional activity.

CUSTOMER

• Own and develop the merchandising strategy of divisional product landing pages, including categories and brands, to drive trade KPI’s such as demand and conversion rate. To proactively seek out opportunities to align the online business to store activity and maximise the coverage of key product ranges on site.
• Regular assessment of the divisional web presentation. Challenge and provide user experience and navigation suggestions/changes to Trading Manager based on KPI’s, competitor analysis and customer journey relevance.
• Create new hierarchy structures & work with the SEO team.
• Proactively ingest search tool reports on high and low conversion search terms to develop action points that optimise the shopping experience. Report on internal search trends to the and opportunities to adjust divisional content planning and product hierarchy in response to customer behaviour.
• Work alongside the Creative team and Trade Analyst to launch tests that manipulate current site content modules to maximise customer experience and boost conversion. Communicate trade results linked to active A/B tests to the Trade Analyst so that reporting can reflect all key commercial KPI’s.

MARKETING

• Support the Trade Manager in weekly Online Marketing team meetings to identify divisional trends and future action points through the trend analysis to deliver the trade strategy.
• Use knowledge from the competitor range tracker and regular competitor analysis to communicate range variances, launch timings and commercial opportunities to the Trade Manager and marketing team.
• Performance Marketing: Working closely with the Digital Marketing team to understand all key onsite analytics and performance metrics to align and optimise trading potential with marketing activities. Assess and optimise regional market opportunities relative to stock availability & product performance.
• SEO/PPC: Regularly update marketing with regards to new brands, products and all associated key words, ensure they are alerted to /optimise all browse and navigational changes.
• Seasonal Planning: Contribute to the trade calendar with brand and product launches, exclusives and events and external brand campaign activities. Manage collation of product information as part of promotional activities, including sale, and lead divisional testing of all promotional functionality on site for event launches.

TEAM

• Manage the Administrator; oversee their daily tasks, monitor performance and provide constructive feedback where applicable whilst helping with the development of job knowledge and key skills. This will involve overseeing the end to end process of publishing products to the site and the management of core product data (product hierarchy and attributes) and regular review of the collective product range and customer journey.
• Provide ad hoc support to the Trading Manger on special projects, liaising effectively with all relevant teams within the Harrods business to deliver objectives.
• Maintain supportive relationships with the store Buying team and concession brand teams, sharing information regarding the divisional strategy and identifying opportunities to build each business based on data analysis.
• Demonstrates a proactive interest in personal development and seeks to improve skill set gaps and gain more responsibility within the division. Proactively review personal development plan with Trade Manager to ensure continuous progress towards promotions.

• At least 1-2 years year experience in an Online Trading Administrator position
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications including Excel
• Solid understanding of trade reporting and analytics tools
• Preferred experience with Product Information Management systems
• Customer focused with a keen interest in retail
• Brand and industry knowledge of current activity and positioning
• Analytical with an accurate attention to detail
• Workload prioritisation in a high pressure and fast pace environment

• Demand, dispatched sales and retained sales
• Traffic
• Conversion
• Average Order Value
• Margin (% and cash)
• Get to product