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E-Commerce Beauty Buyer - Cosmetics

takealot.com

Cape Town · Western Cape · onsite

takealot.com

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.takealot.com/">takealot.com</a>, South Africa's leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented <strong>E-Commerce Beauty Buyer</strong> to join our Retail team in Cape Town.</span></p> <p>We are looking for a commercially driven&nbsp;<strong>E-Commerce Beauty Buyer</strong> to accelerate the growth of our Cosmetics category.</p> <p>This is not a traditional buying role. The Buyer will own the end-to-end commercial performance of the category, combining <strong>buying, digital trading, assortment strategy, supplier negotiation, pricing, inventory management and customer insight</strong> to deliver sustainable GMV and profitability growth.</p> <p>The successful candidate will understand both <strong>Beauty and E-commerce</strong>: what customers are searching for, what converts, what trends are emerging and how to translate those insights into a high-performing online assortment.</p> <p><strong>Your responsibilities will include:</strong></p> <p><strong>Category Ownership &amp; Growth:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Own category performance across <strong>GMV, sales growth, gross profit, margin and market share</strong>.</li> <li>Develop and execute the annual category growth strategy.</li> <li>Identify customer, brand, price-point and assortment white spaces.</li> <li>Drive customer acquisition, penetration, frequency and basket growth.</li> <li>Build clear beauty and emerging-brand strategies.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Digital Trading:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Trade the category daily using real-time performance data.</li> <li>Monitor <strong>traffic, conversion, search demand, availability, pricing, promotional performance and SKU productivity</strong>.</li> <li>Identify underperforming areas and implement corrective actions quickly.</li> <li>Capitalise on trending products and emerging demand before competitors.</li> <li>Optimise promotional mechanics, bundles, gifting and digital exclusives.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Assortment &amp; Range Productivity:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Build a customer-led, digitally relevant assortment.</li> <li>Use data to determine which brands, products and price points should be expanded, maintained or exited.</li> <li>Drive productivity at SKU level.</li> <li>Reduce duplication, long-tail inefficiency and aged inventory.</li> <li>Maintain strong availability on high-demand and hero SKUs.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Brand Acquisition &amp; Innovation:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Identify and secure high-growth <strong>local, international, social-first and emerging beauty brands</strong>.</li> <li>Build a pipeline of new brands and product launches.</li> <li>Monitor global beauty trends, social media, search behaviour and competitor activity.</li> <li>Develop online exclusives and first-to-market opportunities.</li> <li>Ensure launches are executed with speed and commercial impact.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Pricing &amp; Competitiveness:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Maintain strong price competitiveness across key products and brands.</li> <li>Monitor competitor pricing and promotional activity.</li> <li>Balance customer value with margin requirements.</li> <li>Develop price architecture across opening, core, premium and prestige price points.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Supplier &amp; Commercial Management:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Lead negotiations across <strong>cost, margin, rebates, marketing investment, exclusivity, payment terms and promotional funding</strong>.</li> <li>Build strategic relationships with brand owners and distributors.</li> <li>Develop joint business plans with key suppliers.</li> <li>Hold suppliers accountable for availability, launch execution and commercial commitments.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Inventory &amp; Availability:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Partner closely with planning to ensure the right stock is available at the right time.</li> <li>Manage stock cover, sell-through, ageing and inventory productivity.</li> <li>Protect availability on top-selling SKUs.</li> <li>Balance growth ambition with working-capital efficiency.</li> </ul> <p><strong>On-Site Customer Experience:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Work cross-functionally to improve category navigation, search and discoverability.</li> <li>Ensure product content, imagery, descriptions and attributes support conversion.</li> <li>Use customer reviews, search behaviour and shopping data to identify opportunities.</li> <li>Partner with marketing and site teams to create commercially powerful beauty campaigns and launches.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Qualification &amp; Experience:</strong></p> <ul> <li>4–7+ years’ experience in <strong>e-commerce buying, category management, digital trading or commercial retail</strong>.</li> <li>Beauty/Cosmetics experience strongly preferred.</li> <li>Demonstrated ownership of meaningful <strong>GMV, sales and profitability targets</strong>.</li> <li>Strong understanding of e-commerce metrics including <strong>conversion, traffic, AOV, availability and promotional performance</strong>.</li> <li>Excellent commercial negotiation capability.</li> <li>Strong analytical and Excel/data skills.</li> <li>Proven ability to use data to make fast commercial decisions.</li> <li>Experience managing large SKU assortments is advantageous.</li> <li>Strong understanding of digital consumer behaviour and online retail trends.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Key Success Measures:</strong></p> <ul> <li>GMV and sales growth.</li> <li>Gross profit and margin.</li> <li>Market-share growth.</li> <li>Conversion rate.</li> <li>Customer penetration.</li> <li>Average order value.</li> <li>In-stock availability.</li> <li>Stock turn.</li> <li>SKU productivity.</li> <li>Aged-stock reduction.</li> <li>New-brand contribution.</li> <li>Promotional ROI.</li> <li>Supplier funding.</li> <li>Speed to market.</li> </ul> <p><strong>The Environment</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">:&nbsp;</span></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer- centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e- commerce company in Africa.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> We are short on ego and high on output.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> We are doers and not only thinkers, its all in the execution after all.&nbsp;</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;"> We love what we do and what we are creating</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span></li> <li>We seek to employ an <strong>Extra Ordinary Mind </strong>who&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: 400;">is </span>Smart, has Integrity,&nbsp;<span style="font-weight: 400;">and </span>is Hardworking.&nbsp;</li> </ul> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you meet the above you are an </span><strong>Extraordinary Mind </strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">so come and join us!&nbsp;</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Takealot Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applicants from the previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities, to apply</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></strong></p>

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