Men's Outerwear Buyer Job Description - Fashion & Clothing Industry Outerwear Buyer Description

Outerwear Buyer for the Men's Department

Search for fashion industry jobs as a Men's Outerwear Buyer

Are you a menswear buyer looking to specialize? Or an outerwear buyer looking for a sharper focus? Then a career as a men's outerwear buyer could be just the right fit for you.

Strong credentials and experience are a must for the men's outerwear buyer. You should possess a minimum of two years experience in men's outerwear, or as a men's wear product manager or buyer. Previous retail experience with an excellent track record for customer service can help you stand out from the rest. Being cloaked with energy, confidence, and an intense love for the world of men's fashion can't hurt either!

Fashion passion combined with experience equals fashion foresight. A clear understanding of your company's culture and objectives, as well as market trends and the concept of branding (or brand personalities), will help you guide both your decisions and those of your assistant buyer(s) and buyer's administrator(s). Your ideas will contribute to developing and expanding the men's outerwear range for the coming seasons.

Beyond sourcing products, you will need to keep up with fit specification changes, and may potentially have a hand in the most basic stages of product development, including choice of fabrics and silhouettes for outerwear garments in the line.

Effective presentation of products and ideas to senior management and later to clients will be an integral part of this position. You will be part of strategy meetings in which you will have to think ahead to what consumers will be looking for in the coming season. You will make pre-season orders of merchandise, and make decisions involving stocking the stores with enough inventory in the right product groups.

Your organizational and communication skills will also come into play in your interactions with suppliers and other departments. A senior outerwear buyer will negotiate with suppliers for optimum discounts, acceptable payment terms, and quick delivery. You will collaborate with the merchandising team to plan pricing strategies, as well as promotional ones. The men's outerwear buyer may have to attend photo shoots and be familiar enough with visual merchandising to select items for print catalogs and promotions.

As is the case with many senior buyer positions, having worked with overseas suppliers in India or other Eastern countries, is a sizable advantage if you are seeking a career in men's outerwear. If you don't have contacts in manufacturing and sales in India and the Far East, those relationships can be created. (These geographical areas tend to produce attractive apparel and accessories that sell well due to both mass appeal and affordability.)

Do you have the flexibility for travel to source new products and develop ideas? Or to check out your company's competitors? Travel is what we here at ApparelSearch.com like to call a perk. It does, however, require that you have the freedom to travel on short notice (to trade shows, etc.), which is not a luxury available to everyone. If you have traveled before in a senior buying position, and still have the flexibility to travel, you are one step closer to having a men's outerwear purchasing position in your proverbial pocket.

Search for fashion industry jobs as a Men's Outerwear Buyer

Welcome to the men's outerwear 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 men's outerwear 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.

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