Trading Manager
Marks & Spencer · United Kingdom · onsite
Summary
We’re looking for a strong Trading Manager to help shape the future of Fashion, Home & Beauty in this influential global role at the heart of Commercial & Operations. You’ll bring strategic thinking and operational expertise to high-impact transformation workstreams, helping turn our trade plan into stronger sales and sustainable profit.
Working across business units and channels, you’ll help coordinate the FH&B trade and activity plans while influencing end-to-end pricing, stock clearance and day-to-day trading decisions. You’ll build strong partnerships with Retail, Sparks, Marketing, CIU, Online, Logistics, Finance and D&T, bringing clarity and momentum to complex priorities. This is an opportunity to make a visible commercial impact—combining insight, pace and adaptability to guide strategic projects, respond to changing trading conditions and maximise profitable growth.
Due to high interest, this role may close earlier than advertised. We recommend applying as soon as possible.
What you’ll do
Your key accountabilities will include
• Close cross-functional working with CIU, all BU’s, Marketing, Retail and the Food Group to drive an 18-month forward trading calendar, ensuring alignment across all business areas for key trading dates. Ensure key commercial categories are surfaced in the planning stages to feature at the correct time in the plan using CIU data and historical sales insight and analysis to support decision making.
• Shaping in season clearance and sale strategy across all channels and BU’s alongside the Pricing & Promotions team to ensure stock into sale, sell through and profit targets are finely balanced. Collaboration with the Supply Chain team to ensure the network capacities can deliver the operational requirements. Involvement in the co-ordination of the Sale Steering Group and future Sale strategy alongside the effective exit of residual stocks from the business.
• Key role in leading the co-ordination and governance of a new E2E pricing strategy to ensure we land trusted value form cradle to grave of all product.
• Involvement at various stages of the cross-BU seasonal ATL campaign process to support tighter governance, ‘right first time’ execution and insightful reporting.
• Partnership with Finance teams to analyse, model and review the commercial effectiveness of promotions and to make recommendations for future mechanics and tactical trading responses to best utilise the C&H promotional budget.
• Review and analysis of the current in-season trading performance working with the BU’s/channels/Sparks to adapt and adjust in response to changing customer mindsets and market conditions. Support for BU decision making in order to drive the best commercial return.
Who you are
Your skills and experience will include
• Strong commercial and trading acumen alongside confident analytical ability
• Experience in building effective stakeholder relationships at all levels and working collaboratively across multiple functions to achieve a consensus and deliver an end goal
• Highly organised self-starter that’s capable of working independently as well as playing a key role in a high performing trading team
• Strong decision making and influencing skills
• Previous merchandising and/or online/store leadership experience is desirable
• Data centric and process driven
Everyone’s welcome
We are ambitious about the future of retail. We are disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We are transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.
We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.
If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don’t hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.
To stay close to customers, our support teams are in the office three days a week as we believe that skills are developed through collaboration, and that spending time together makes us more creative and connected.