E-Commerce Beauty Buyer - Cosmetics

takealot.com, South Africa's leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented E-Commerce Beauty Buyer to join our Retail team in Cape Town.

We are looking for a commercially driven E-Commerce Beauty Buyer to accelerate the growth of our Cosmetics category.

This is not a traditional buying role. The Buyer will own the end-to-end commercial performance of the category, combining buying, digital trading, assortment strategy, supplier negotiation, pricing, inventory management and customer insight to deliver sustainable GMV and profitability growth.

The successful candidate will understand both Beauty and E-commerce: what customers are searching for, what converts, what trends are emerging and how to translate those insights into a high-performing online assortment.

• Own category performance across GMV, sales growth, gross profit, margin and market share.
• Develop and execute the annual category growth strategy.
• Identify customer, brand, price-point and assortment white spaces.
• Drive customer acquisition, penetration, frequency and basket growth.
• Build clear beauty and emerging-brand strategies.

• Trade the category daily using real-time performance data.
• Monitor traffic, conversion, search demand, availability, pricing, promotional performance and SKU productivity.
• Identify underperforming areas and implement corrective actions quickly.
• Capitalise on trending products and emerging demand before competitors.
• Optimise promotional mechanics, bundles, gifting and digital exclusives.

• Build a customer-led, digitally relevant assortment.
• Use data to determine which brands, products and price points should be expanded, maintained or exited.
• Drive productivity at SKU level.
• Reduce duplication, long-tail inefficiency and aged inventory.
• Maintain strong availability on high-demand and hero SKUs.

• Identify and secure high-growth local, international, social-first and emerging beauty brands.
• Build a pipeline of new brands and product launches.
• Monitor global beauty trends, social media, search behaviour and competitor activity.
• Develop online exclusives and first-to-market opportunities.
• Ensure launches are executed with speed and commercial impact.

• Maintain strong price competitiveness across key products and brands.
• Monitor competitor pricing and promotional activity.
• Balance customer value with margin requirements.
• Develop price architecture across opening, core, premium and prestige price points.

• Lead negotiations across cost, margin, rebates, marketing investment, exclusivity, payment terms and promotional funding.
• Build strategic relationships with brand owners and distributors.
• Develop joint business plans with key suppliers.
• Hold suppliers accountable for availability, launch execution and commercial commitments.

• Partner closely with planning to ensure the right stock is available at the right time.
• Manage stock cover, sell-through, ageing and inventory productivity.
• Protect availability on top-selling SKUs.
• Balance growth ambition with working-capital efficiency.

• Work cross-functionally to improve category navigation, search and discoverability.
• Ensure product content, imagery, descriptions and attributes support conversion.
• Use customer reviews, search behaviour and shopping data to identify opportunities.
• Partner with marketing and site teams to create commercially powerful beauty campaigns and launches.

• 4–7+ years’ experience in e-commerce buying, category management, digital trading or commercial retail.
• Beauty/Cosmetics experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ownership of meaningful GMV, sales and profitability targets.
• Strong understanding of e-commerce metrics including conversion, traffic, AOV, availability and promotional performance.
• Excellent commercial negotiation capability.
• Strong analytical and Excel/data skills.
• Proven ability to use data to make fast commercial decisions.
• Experience managing large SKU assortments is advantageous.
• Strong understanding of digital consumer behaviour and online retail trends.

• GMV and sales growth.
• Gross profit and margin.
• Market-share growth.
• Conversion rate.
• Customer penetration.
• Average order value.
• In-stock availability.
• Stock turn.
• SKU productivity.
• Aged-stock reduction.
• New-brand contribution.
• Promotional ROI.
• Supplier funding.
• Speed to market.