Most fashion buyers start as buying admin assistants or assistant buyers and work their way up over several years. There's no single qualification you need. What brands look for is someone who understands product and can work with numbers, because a buyer decides what the business sells and is judged on whether it sells.
I ran a fashion business before I moved into recruitment, so I've sat on the other side of the buying table. This is how the route really works.
What a fashion buyer does
A buyer chooses the range a brand will sell in a season: which styles, in what colours and sizes, at what price and in what quantity. They agree cost and delivery with suppliers, and work with merchandisers on the numbers.
Once the range lands, the job is reading how it trades. Which lines are selling, which need marking down, what to reorder and what to drop next time. A buyer who picked a beautiful range that didn't sell has had a bad season, however good it looked.
The usual route in
Most buying careers follow the same ladder.
- Buying admin assistant. Purchase orders, samples, supplier chasing, keeping the range plan up to date. Unglamorous, and the best possible way to learn how a buying office runs.
- Assistant buyer. You start looking after part of a range and sit in on supplier meetings.
- Buyer. You own a category or a range and answer for how it trades.
- Senior buyer, then head of buying. You manage a team of buyers and set the direction for a whole department or brand.
The jump from assistant buyer to buyer is the hardest, and it's usually where people move company to make it happen.
Do you need a degree?
It helps, especially for graduate schemes at the bigger retailers, but it isn't essential. Plenty of buyers came up from the shop floor, or from a supplier or wholesale business where they learned product and costings from the other side. Brands care more about what you know about product and margin than about which course you did.
If you're on the shop floor now and want to get into buying, tell your manager and your area manager. Head office teams often recruit admin assistants from stores, because store staff already know what customers buy.
The skills brands look for
When we recruit buyers, these come up in nearly every brief:
- A strong product eye for the brand's customer, which isn't the same as your own taste.
- Comfort with numbers: margin, sell-through, cost prices, open-to-buy.
- Negotiation with suppliers, firm without damaging the relationship.
- Clear communication with merchandisers and the stores.
The second point is the one people underestimate. In interviews, a buyer who can explain why a line worked, in numbers, is far stronger than one who can only describe it.
What it pays
The Office for National Statistics' 2025 earnings survey puts median full-time pay for buyers and procurement officers at £37,306, and for purchasing managers and directors at £58,005 (ONS occupation tables). Those figures cover buyers in every industry, not only fashion, so treat them as a guide. Assistant buyer roles pay less, and senior buyers at the bigger fashion and luxury brands can earn well above the median.
Buying and merchandising
Buyers and merchandisers work side by side, and the two get confused. The buyer chooses the product. The merchandiser plans the numbers: how much to buy and when to reorder or mark down. Some people start in one and move to the other. If you love product, buying is the natural fit. If you love the numbers more, look at merchandising.
Talk to us
We recruit buyers and merchandisers for fashion and luxury brands in the UK and abroad. Read how we recruit for head office roles, see our live vacancies, or register with us and one of the directors will call you.