Lingerie Buyer Job Description

Lingerie Buyer

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The ideal candidate for a lingerie buyer position has experience in the fashion buying business, and in the hosiery or lingerie-buying sector specifically. With recent experience in the lingerie buying field, you could enter this position making a salary range in the mid-40's to mid-50's. If you don't have experience in the lingerie field, a senior buyer in another market who is looking to, ahem, slip into something a little more comfortable, might find the lingerie market to be right for her.

A lingerie buyer will generally have clients who maintain several different and diverse departments. Rare is the retailer that focuses exclusively on lingerie items. It will be your job to get them interested and excited about the possibilities of increasing their sales margins with lingerie.

The senior lingerie buyer is directly involved in sourcing new products. How much can lingerie really change? You would be surprised. Lingerie changes in style, materials, color, and embellishments to accommodate fashion trends. You will search out quality products for your clients to provide to their fashion-conscious consumers. This may require some travel, including but not limited to sourcing trips in Europe, India, or the Far East.

Are you a team-player? Lingerie buyers must play well with others. You will work closely with merchandisers to plan promotional, pricing, and financial strategies. If you are working with a designer or designers, you must be capable of sharing creative ideas with the design team about new products or product developments. You also will have to responsibilities and accounts within your buying team, and manage the professional development of junior buyers and buyer's administrators.

The ability to interpret numerical data and make decisions from that data are two skills that will make you a more successful lingerie buyer. You will be the head of your hosiery buying team, and as such, will be required to take the lead on many financial decisions. The ability to analyze sales and market data can make the difference between being outstanding in this position and being mediocre. You must understand profit margins and sales objectives in order to achieve them.

You will be responsible for short-term and long-term financial planning and pre-season ordering for your clients lingerie needs. You must understand not only the clients goals, but have an idea of the demographic of customers they serve lingerie styles vary widely. (You probably won't have cotton nursing gowns in the same place as vinyl bustiers, for example.) You must be organized, and once again, able to interpret data, in order to plan successfully, and to keep track of the turnover of millions of lingerie items though the clients you serve.

Come prepared to negotiate prices with vendors. You will also negotiate with suppliers to secure the most timely and accurate and affordable shipping for your clients.

The crux of it is this: If you are capable of communicating well, and are organized, financially aware, and have a background in lingerie or hosiery, this could well be the career for you.

If you possess an eye for design that is only matched by your awareness of needs of the lingerie consumer, a lingerie purchasing position may be one that fits you nicely.

Search online for jobs as a Lingerie Buyer.

When buying lingerie, one aspect to consider is the color. Learn about some of the popular lingerie colors.

We also suggest you learn more about lingerie in our fashion influence section.

Welcome to the lingerie buyer job description section of the Apparel Search employment directory. In this section of our guide we present information relevant to a career as a lingerie buyer. Although for many of our career descriptions we provide information that we have developed internally, a large portion of this section relies heavily on user input. No one knows a career path better than someone that has actually worked in the particular position. Therefore, we welcome members of the fashion community to submit their personal experience to this page. Active members of the fashion industry are welcome to contribute to the job descriptions by using the comment area below.

If you have previously or currently work as a lingerie buyer please add your insight to the community discussion. Educators such as fashion school teachers and knowledgeable garment industry veterans are also welcome to comment. Let's all work together to help educate the world about various fashion careers. More specifically, let's education regarding this particular career path.

Please only post educational information or questions specifically relevant to the job of a lingerie buyer.