Gemma Maclean
Glasgow
Overview
14
14
years of professional experience
Work history
Junior Buyer
Dobbies Garden Centres
Lasswade, Edinburgh
05.2025 - Current
- Ownership of footwear, accessories and jewellery categories within the Home department.
- Building and implementing a new footwear, accessories and jewellery strategy for 2026 to develop commercially balanced core and seasonal ranges aligned to brand strategy, customer profiles and margin targets.
- Building seasonal range plans including price architecture and option counts.
- Bringing onboard key brands in-line with Dobbies core and secondary customer as part of new strategy – Hunter, Crocs & Radley.
- Traded ranges in-season to maximise sell-through and profitability while trialling new brands and product groups to test for future seasons.
- Participate in seasonal product sign-off meetings, presenting product performance, trend relevance and commercial rationale
- Negotiate cost prices, margins and payment terms with suppliers to optimise profitability.
- Reviewed weekly sales and intake performance, identifying top-performing lines and recommending repeats, exits or price actions.
- Present trading insights and recommendations to Buying and Merchandising teams.
- Support, progress and mentor junior team members, sharing best practice across product management and supplier communication.
Assistant Buyer
schuh
London & Bathgate
06.2018 - 03.2025
- An established Assistant Buyer with 6 years of product management experience across both adult and kids' footwear alongside apparel and accessories.
- Maintaining excellent brand/supplier relationships with experience across departments spanning 30+ brands including Adidas, Nike, Puma and New Balance, alongside key lifestyle brands.
- Identifying and influencing buying opportunities resulting in increased margin and profit gains.
- Continually negotiating with brands and suppliers to resolve any critical path/order delay problems and communicating the outcome to the team
- Analysis of daily and weekly sales data, optimising any in season trading opportunities.
- Attending and contributing to meetings with brands/suppliers, continuing to grow those relationships.
- Managing and organising full buying seasons across multiple department calendars to ensure deadlines are met and seasonal ranges are delivered on time.
- Briefing and developing successful SMU designs in collaboration with brands, ensuring alignment with trend, performance and brand DNA across Adults and Kids.
- Working on multiple schuh campaigns, selecting and sourcing strong and trend driven product.
- Adapting to changing needs of the business by showing resilience and flexibility with changing deadlines.
- Ownership in resolving and escalating issues impacting ways of working within my team.
- Conducting regular store visits, building relationships with Managers and reporting back to the wider business.
- Strong commercial awareness of competitor activity by keeping up to date with direct competition product access, pricing architecture and marketing activations, making sure to feed back to the team with monthly newsletter decks.
- Working closely and effectively with other teams within the business to maximise sales, and build strong relationships i.e. Merchandising, Marketing, Ecommerce, PR, VM, Retail etc
- Extensive travel to brand appointments and schuh stores.
Customer Service Team Member
schuh
Bathgate
09.2017 - 05.2018
- Excellent communication skills and conflict resolution, remaining patient with every customer and achieving consistent positive outcomes
- Problem solving customer concerns in a high pressure. time sensitive environment
- Learned to use multiple platforms and programs within a short training window.
- Skilled in effectively managing time and prioritising tasks to ensure timely resolution of customer inquiries and requests
Sales Assistant
schuh
Edinburgh & Livingston, Doncaster
05.2012 - 08.2017
- Strong knowledge of product and customer needs.
- Resilient team player, helped to achieve weekly and annual sales targets
- Diligent in maintaining the visual presentation and organisation of products on the sales floor through effective merchandising strategies.
- Developed interpersonal skills, built rapports with customers, fostered positive relationships and maximised customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Education
Bachelor of Arts: Industrial Product Design -
Edinburgh Napier University
Edinburgh 2012 - 2016
Timeline
Junior Buyer
Dobbies Garden Centres
05.2025 - Current
Assistant Buyer
schuh
06.2018 - 03.2025
Customer Service Team Member
schuh
09.2017 - 05.2018
Sales Assistant
schuh
05.2012 - 08.2017
Bachelor of Arts: Industrial Product Design -
Edinburgh Napier University
2012 - 2016