Home Furnishing Buyer

Company Overview

Shades of Light is one of the most dynamic e-commerce brands in the $800 billion home furnishings market. We strive to inspire our customers to distinguish their unique style with a highly curated selection of hand-picked and exclusive designs. Shades of Light started from humble beginnings in 1986 as a small, single retail location in historic Richmond, Virginia selling unique, high-style lighting designs. Since that time, the company has grown to become a national, multi-channel retailer of lighting and other home decor products, including rugs, furniture, mirrors, fans, and wall decor. True to its heritage though, the company has remained singularly focus on its curated collection of high-style products and unique lighting designs, many of which are produced in-house by the company’s own staff of highly trained artisans.

Job Overview

The Home Furnishing Buyer is responsible for selecting and maintaining a curated assortment of rugs, furniture, and home décor products for the company’s catalog and website. This position involves traveling to industry buying markets multiple times per year to source new products that meet company standards for quality, pricing, and vendor reliability. The Home Furnishing Buyer creates product records, enters item data into internal systems, and writes product descriptions.

Job Responsibilities:

• Select new rugs, furniture and home decor items for our catalog and website
• Travel to buying markets at least 4 times per year to search and select new unique items to fill merchandise assortment gaps and goals while considering margin, retail, quality and vendor dependability
• Create new SKUs, set all required product attributes and write product copy
• Track style and design trends (design blogs, publications, etc.)
• Review weekly sales to help identify product trends and best sellers
• Maintain vendor data sheets, contact information, discounts, free freight levels, IMAP policies, etc. current in our system
• Effectively manage vendor relationships and negotiate terms when applicable
• Help procure back-ordered products and substitutes, including media requests
• Assist with catalog cover planning and ordering process, including finding substitutes for discontinued or back-ordered items
• Find alternate suppliers for SKUs with quality control issues or discontinued items as needed
• Assist Quality Control by confirming product details and/or determining whether product details and finish variations are within range for products

Qualifications / Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Marketing, Merchandising, or related field
• 3-5 years of buying and/or merchandising experience
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Able to work effectively with internal teams, external teams, and third party vendors.

Benefits:

We offer an attractive benefits package including:

• Medical with Health Savings Account
• Dental
• Vision
• Short-Term Disability - paid by employer
• 401(k) plan with company match
• Paid time off
• 7 Paid holidays
• $200 Referral bonus and more!