Bethan Venvell on Why She Can’t Help Being Her Team’s Biggest Fan

For Bethan Venvell, Team Lead for Women’s Designer, the most rewarding aspect of her work at Zalando is fostering talent. We have talked to her about the challenges and joys her role offers and why — two years into her job at Zalando — she remains her team’s biggest fan.

Bethan, could you talk about your professional story and what led you to Zalando?

I’m originally from the UK and studied at the University of Southampton, where I got my BA degree in Philosophy. I was going to do my Master’s, but it did not work out so I applied for an in-store retail position in Central London. Through conversations with the people I worked with, I learnt what Buying was. It really intrigued me, and I decided to do a short Buying and Merchandising course at London College of Fashion. After that, I knew — buying was exactly what I had to do! After this, I started applying for every buying role or internship I could find, and eventually, after a short internship, I secured a job at a large UK department store as a Buying Assistant in Women’s Premium Brands. After seven fantastic years there, I started to look for a new challenge within e-commerce. Eventually, I came across a position as a Buyer for Women’s Designer Accessories Zalando that was similar to my role at the time. I was offered this job in January of 2019 and made the jump to move to Berlin. Then in December 2019, I moved as the Senior Buyer for Designer Women’s Ready-to-wear. Last September, I interviewed for the role of a Team Lead for Women’s Designer, and was lucky enough to be offered that position.

Could you talk a bit about your current responsibilities as a Team Lead?

My remit is across all the Designer Women’s categories of Ready-to-wear, Accessories and Footwear, leading a team of three senior buyers who head up each of those areas. Firstly, my role is to set a clear strategy, ensuring it supports our overarching company vision and targets. In parallel with my counterpart in men’s, I work on setting, measuring and analysing seasonal expectations for brand acquisition, assortment development and commercial KPIs. This role also implies guiding our extremely expert and knowledgeable teams, acting as a soundboard and enabling alignment with the internal stakeholders to make our strategy happen. In addition, I support my Director in various work streams for Designer internally — from collaborating with our Partner Programme and Connected Retail teams, to working with our photo studios on the shooting and presentation standards of our more than 120 brands. Finally, and very importantly, I’m responsible for leading the Designer Women’s Buying teams in their career development and progression.

What would you say are the most challenging and the most rewarding aspects of your job?

Working with people is the most rewarding to me. My team are incredible, and they all work with such passion and drive for their business. Being able to uplift them and give them recognition is really important to me. I think that being a team leader is really about giving your team a platform to shine. It’s important to give visibility to every member of the team, celebrate their successes and think about the projects they can get involved in. Seeing people progress into promotions and new positions is a fantastic privilege in my role. And one of the more challenging parts of my job is navigating the many different stakeholders within our organisation, and making sure that collaborations happen effectively to deliver our Designer strategy.

How has the current COVID situation affected your work?

I really miss the camaraderie we have always had in our department. I miss working on projects as a team, and the moments of crowding around someone’s computer to write a strategy paper together, and that energy that you get from people. A major shift for my teams of course has been the ban on travel and not being able to physically interact with products and meeting our brand partners in person. But obviously, we’ve adapted and learned to work from home. I think the past year has taught us the importance of empathy, being mindful of other people’s wishes and boundaries. It’s been hard, but our team has brought some incredible results — we’ve signed up over 30 new brands, and delivered great sales results. So, it’s safe to say that working from home hasn’t impacted my team’s commercial achievements.

What should a new joiner to your team expect?

We are an ambitious, dynamic, high-performing and ownership-driven set of people. We welcome new ideas, we are supportive towards each other, and we have so-so many fantastic people in the team that we all can learn from. Some of us come from a luxury background and others from retail. Having an open mind, being willing to learn, being confident to share ideas, and having a voice is really important here. But it’s also important to collaborate and bring a strong analytical mindset — be ready to dive into data and independently drive your own business.

If you’re interested in our Buying and Merchandising teams, check out our open positions here.