Purchasing Management Specialist - Food (bilingual Japanese)

Summary:

The Purchasing Specialist who is responsible for planning, sourcing, and purchasing all products within the assigned category(ies); will have end-to-end ownership of a category of our products.

Daily functions include sourcing new vendors, building and managing vendor relations, negotiating costs and terms, maintaining existing product lines, and setting up new product lines respectively.

He/she will also interact with our marketing and promotion teams to come up with pricing and selling plans and make decisions on how to scale and expand our customer base and drive GMV growth and margins.

The goal of our merchandising team is to drive GMV and customer growth while maintaining healthy margins. This position will require bilingual skills to communicate and negotiate with both domestic and international vendors.

Job Responsibilities:

Sourcing & Procurement

• Generate purchase orders, follow up with POs, confirm the status and ensure delivery daily
  

• Source and develop new vendors, craft negotiation strategies and terms on price, payment, and lead time, and close deals with optimal terms
  

• Source and develop new products in Asian Food segments based on various factors such as customer demands, price, quality, availability, market trends, and team budgets
  

Strategy and Analytics

• Develop, lead, optimize, and execute category sourcing and purchasing strategies
  

• Use data and multiple dimension metrics to improve KPIs for inventory level, inventory allocation, turnover, and cash flow
  

• Forecast price, analyze customer buying patterns and market trends to identify and optimize product assortment, pricing as well as changes of balance in buyer-supplier power
  

• Customer-driven, ability to reflect business from the customer side, and increase customer experience through everyday work
  

• Effectively communicate results of KPIs & root cause analysis with the management team and lead corrective action implementation in areas where performance is not meeting expectations
  

Vendor relationship:

• Manage and maintain good vendor relationships and performance by deploying a standard set of metrics to improve vendors’ performance including fill rate, lead time, OSHA requirements, etc
  

• Ability to maintain perspective and confidence in face of difficult price negotiations, exceptionally tight deadlines, and expectations
  

• Partner with cross-functional teams on platform promotions, marketing allocation, mark-downs, payments terms, and other special requests
  

• Other Job tasks as assigned
  

Qualification and Requirement:

• Bachelor’s Degree
  
• 1+ years of purchasing and or vendor management experience in retail or related industries
  
• Demonstrated enthusiasm for Asian Japanese foods/grocery/snack/drink products and understanding of respective customers
  
• Excellent negotiation and persuasion skills in English & mastery of Japanese is required
  
• Communication in Chinese Mandarin is a plus
  
• Analytical thinker with a positive attitude and flexibility to accommodate evolving business needs
  
• Excellent attention to detail, self-starter with the ability to learn, grow and adapt quickly
  
• Decision-Making: Must be able to assimilate the information gathered by yourself and others (internal & external) to make sound and timely decisions
  
  

Benefits & Compensation:

• 401(k) matching
  

• Health insurance
  

• Vision insurance
  

• Paid time off (PTO): vacation, sick, and holidays
  

• On-site gym and game rooms
  

• Employee discount
  

• $60K-80K