Sven Buerkle about being a Senior Buyer at Zalando
A career adventure that’s far from brief: Senior Buyer for Men’s Textile, Sven Buerkle, has grown with Zalando for seven years. We ask him to tell us more about his highly collaborative and conscious role.
Can you give us an outline of your career path to this point?
I studied Fashion Management back in the day, which included a lot of economics as well as textile-based subjects. It gave me a useful sense of the bigger picture, from cotton farms to the finished product. After a stint at another ecom business here in Berlin, I joined Zalando seven years ago as a Junior Buyer for Men’s Underwear. Since being promoted to Senior Buyer last year, I now oversee a specific brand portfolio with the Mens Textile department, including Lacoste, Tommy Hilfiger and GANT.
How would you describe your current responsibilities?
As well as budget planning, performance tracking, and communicating with our suppliers and brands on a daily basis, I am responsible for our assortment — essentially, ensuring we have the best choice available to our customers. Increasingly, there’s also a creative aspect to my role, translating Zalando’s strategy for the brands and pushing them to offer us exclusive products.
Tell us a bit more about that.
We don’t just buy, we collaborate. It’s about being more proactive around key pillars like sustainability and inclusivity, part of which is genderless products. We try to ensure that thought goes into every collection, so really having input into the brand, sharing Zalando’s guidelines and helping them to develop something together. An example would be a nice collaboration we just did with Lacoste, a year-long project which resulted in an exclusive collection spanning Mens, Womens and Kids products. We had a big marketing push and it’s performing very well so far.
What are your favourite parts of the job?
I love the challenge of really thinking about and understanding what the customer wants. I am buying for their needs after all, which don’t always coincide with my personal taste. Our customer understanding is very numbers-driven, which makes a nice balance with the more creative side of the role. I also enjoy collaborating with a lot of different stakeholders, such as buyers from other departments, the partner program, and the marketing team which drives Zalando’s platform strategy and the visibility of our collections.
What do you appreciate about your team?
As a Senior Buyer, I am also leading a smaller team: one Buyer and two Assistant Buyers. I appreciate how much direct responsibility each team member takes. Plus, we’re a diverse, international bunch which I think is a huge benefit. Our hiring strategy is based on building a team to complement each member’s individual strengths. Personally, I’m very team-driven. It’s one of the things that really gets the best out of me; I wouldn’t have stayed here for seven years without a great team!
Any advice for new joiners?
Our hiring strategy is based on building a team to complement each member’s individual strengths. We aim to give new joiners the best start with a good onboarding experience, and a buddy to help introduce and train them into the role. With that grounding, a willingness to learn, to develop, be hands-on, and take the driver’s seat from early on should serve new joiners well!
If you’re curious about our Buying and Merchandising teams, check out our open positions here.
