Strategist, Fashion Buying

The role

We are looking to hire a Strategist, Fashion Buying to join our New York based team. 

Salary range - $64,000 - $83,000

This role is office-based out of our New York office

Working at WGSN

Together, we create tomorrow 

A career with WGSN is fast-paced, exciting and full of opportunities to grow and develop. We're a team of consumer and design trend forecasters, content creators, designers, data analysts, advisory consultants and much more, united by a common goal: to create tomorrow. 

WGSN's trusted consumer and design forecasts power outstanding product design, enabling our customers to create a better future. Our services cover consumer insights, beauty, consumer tech, fashion, interiors, lifestyle, food and drink forecasting, data analytics and expert advisory. If you are an expert in your field, we want to hear from you.   

Role overview 

We're looking for a full-time Strategist who has proven fashion buying experience to join our Forecasting team. The role will be based out of our New York office.

You will be required to write industry reports as they relate to the global commercial fashion market, interpreting through the lens of the buyer. With an innate understanding of fashion buying, you will be articulate in written English, data analysis, and visual communication. Being a highly-skilled buyer yourself, you are sought out internally and externally, as a trusted industry insider. As a Strategist, you will contribute to team projects, providing direction in your area of expertise by building and maintaining strong, global department relationships. You will feed into your department’s global content strategy and ensure alignment with key departmental KPIs.

You will have a strong background in fashion buying, including the ability to balance quantitative and qualitative data. You have an innate understanding of a buyer’s seasonal development process and its major milestones, as well as excellent visibility into the wide array of issues a buyer might face (sustainability, pricing, supply chain, etc.). You are knowledgeable about different retail formats and the unique challenges facing buyers in each one. You will produce reports identifying product opportunities for WGSN’s buying clients at an item, category, and divisional level using a combination of image research and WGSN’s proprietary data sets across e-commerce, search, catwalks, social media, and consumer insights.

You will have had significant experience operating in a buying capacity; preferably, you also have experience working at both monobrand and multibrand retailers, as well as omnichannel experience. You will be able to take that knowledge and use it to comment confidently on the implications of apparel trends across multiple product categories. This role sits at a level that is equivalent to an in-brand Buyer.

• Researching and creating solution-driven content, showing a clear understanding of client needs across the buying platform. Delivering this content in either written, visual or video format. 
• Supporting the Senior Strategist to maintain a strong working relationship with Global Content, Content Operations, Sales, Marketing and Product Development. 
• Actively contribute to team forecast and R&D sessions, consistently raising the quality of work within the Buying team, whilst aligning with in-house editorial guidelines. 
• Putting forward new ideas and suggestions for content creation, report processes and formats. 
• Representing Buying for WGSN at client-facing meetings, tradeshows & events and media engagements. Maintaining a high degree of confidence and being able to showcase a visible presence with limited preparation and/or little notice.
• Keeping abreast of client needs across the globe to better understand their challenges, alongside tracking changes within the industry to anticipate these needs.
• Research and develop macro and micro trends as part of a designated Buying team, actively contributing to the content direction.
• Forecasting and tracking market trends using quantitative and qualitative data within all markets, demographics, and regions.
• Collaborate beyond the direct Buying department to build knowledge within the wider Fashion Content team.
• Delivering traffic growth by consistently evaluating internal data and client feedback to improve content standards and relevance.
• Travel nationally and internationally to cover industry trade shows, conferences and other events when required.
• Provide quotes for press and broadcast media as required.
• Work with the consultancy arm, WGSN Mindset, to work and deliver projects and workshops to clients when required.
• Build cross-functional partnerships with data science and analytics teams.

• Proven career experience within fashion buying with an understanding of the apparel or footwear industry across different retail and distribution formats.
• Exceptional knowledge of global fashion markets and the ability to pinpoint trends that will have a significant commercial impact.
• Expert level of experience in writing, editing and presenting through a career path within buying.
• Good standard of written English.
• Good understanding of fashion industry issues and initiatives that shift ways of doing business and affect assortment development decisions.
• A good understanding of the role data and analytics plays in commercial success, with the ability to identify trends that will impact the market. 
• Ability to work with Data Analysts to interrogate data and scope analyses to extract meaningful insights.
• An ease with handling both historical and forecast data.
• Ability to take ownership of personal assignments, prioritise workload and support other members of the team.
• Ability to manage your own time effectively to meet exacting content deadlines.
• Excellent organisation, communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work within an international team to ensure production standards, reports or outputs are of a consistently high standard and submitted on time.
• Willing to invest time to build strong working relationships with the wider content team as well as sales, client services and marketing.
• Technical skills: Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, Google Workspace. Knowledge of SQL and Tableau is an advantage.

What we offer

Our benefits and wellbeing package offers flexible benefits you can tailor to your own personal needs, including:  

- Paid Time Off – 15 days of vacation per year with an additional day for each year of service up to 20 days.  WGSN also observes the 12 Federal holidays.  We also offer 6 weeks of paid Parental Leave. 

- 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan – allows employees to save and invest for their own retirement on a tax deferred basis. WGSN matches 50% of the first 6% contributed by employees.   

- Dental and Vision plans with MetLife

- Health Care with Anthem & Blue Cross Blue Shield 

- Life Insurance, AD&D, Short and Long-Term Disability - all eligible employees receive coverage at no cost through Metlife

- Mental Health – WGSN provides many ways for employees to access mental health care including an Employee Assistance Program and inpatient, outpatient and virtual care if enrolled in an Anthem medical plan. Our EAP is available to all permanent staff, regardless of if you elect benefits.

More about WGSN

WGSN is the global authority on consumer trend forecasting.

We help brands around the world create the right products at the right time for tomorrow’s consumer.

Our values 

We Are Everywhere

The future is everything, it happens everywhere. WGSN is the world-leading forecaster because we track and analyse consumer behaviours, product innovation, design and creativity, everywhere.

We Are Future Focused

We utilise our global resources and intelligence to research, source and analyse quantitative and qualitative data to produce our forecasts. Everything we do is focused on working with our customers to create a successful and positive tomorrow.

We Are Rigorous

We source, review and assess quantitative and qualitative data to produce robust, actionable forecasts. To provide credible insights and design solutions for our clients, it is essential that rigour runs through everything we do.

Our culture 

An inclusive culture is one of our key priorities. We want our people to truly be themselves and thrive. We love having a diverse team of people who bring new ideas, different strengths and perspectives & reflect the global audience we work with.

Inclusive workforce 

We are committed to supporting the environment and sustainability, including ensuring our pension plan defaults to sustainable options and striving to be net zero by 2030.  

Recognising great performance is a key part of our culture. Our Awards schemes recognise and reward the brilliant achievements of our people.  

We offer a flexible working environment with a wide range of flexible, hybrid and agile working arrangements. Conversations about flexible working have always been—and will continue to be—actively encouraged here, but we do not offer full remote working. 

We want to ensure everyone has the opportunity to perform their best when interviewing, so if you require any reasonable adjustments that would make you more comfortable during the process, please let us know so that we can do our best to support you.

A Note for Applicants

We use AI to help our team screen applications and identify candidates whose skills and experience match the role. This technology removes personal information to promote a fair and unbiased process. We believe this tool helps us find the best talent while maintaining transparency and fairness.

A Note for Recruiters 

Thank you so much for your interest in working with us at  WGSN!   Our internal Talent Acquisition team takes care of all our recruitment efforts. When we need some extra help, we partner with agencies on our Preferred Supplier List (PSL) that truly understand our business, culture and ways of working together.  Since we focus on these established partnerships, we’re unable to respond to unsolicited contacts or CVs from outside our PSL. But don’t worry! If we decide to explore new partnerships, we’ll be sure to reach out.