Group Lead of Procurement and Inventory
Bloom & Wild
Operations
Nuneaton, UK
Posted on Dec 11, 2024
Hi, we’re Bloom & Wild. We don’t just send flowers. We help our customers to care wildly. Caring wildly is celebrating the little things we all do for each other every day. Not just the big occasions. It’s being there for the highs. Stepping up for the lows.
We care wildly about people and our planet. Which is why we’re so proud to be a certified B Corp™ – committed to making long-term positive change for our community, and the world around us.
Founded in 2013, our mission back then was to make sending and receiving flowers the joy that it should be, by harnessing technology, brand and letterbox delivery. We announced £75 million Series D funding in 2021 and that same year acquired bloomon in The Netherlands and Bergamotte in France. Together, we’ve fulfilled and delivered over 20 million orders (and counting!), making us the largest direct to consumer flower business in Europe.
Now home to a family of 3 beautiful brands, we’re driven by our vision to create the destination for making life a little more thoughtful and beautiful. And we won't stop at flowers and plants. Starting with the Bloom & Wild brand, we're expanding our gifting offering to other categories like cakes, candles and cocktails. This is all part of our ambition to build Europe's #1 direct to consumer gifting destination.
🛠️ Operations @ Bloom & Wild Group
The Operations team at bloomon and Bloom & Wild is split into two sub-teams, although in practice there is a close collaboration between all these sub-teams on a daily basis:
- Production and supply chain - centralized around our two main warehouses near Amsterdam and Birmingham the teams run our sourcing, supply chain, production and fulfilment operation. They cover the full range of products we process in our own warehouses: flowers, plants, gifts, food & drinks, packaging material and much more. They optimise for customer satisfaction, On Time-In Full fulfilment, quality and associated COGS.
- Fulfilment and Customer Operations - managing our partially outsourced sourcing, production and fulfilment in the UK, optimising our delivery organisation in all countries we are active in and servicing our customers with the Customer Delight team. The team works closely with our partners to achieve operational excellence and optimise for quality and customer satisfaction, delivery performance, capacity and associated COGS.
The procurement and inventory team is part of our Production and Supply chain domain, and is responsible for the inventory of all non-horti products used in all warehouses of our group. Among others this covers packaging materials (eg. flower boxes, wrapping paper, ribbons), lifestyle products (eg. vases, candles, baby clothing), food & drinks (chocolates, biscuits, alcoholic beverages). With our rapidly expanding range, the amount of categories and products is continuously growing.
The main responsibility of the procurement and inventory team is ensuring that we have the right materials, in the right place, with the right quality for the best price and in the most sustainable way possible.
This team is also responsible for optimizing our inventory position to balance maximising availability for customers and limiting our stock holding in line with stock cover goals and supply chain timelines.
⚙️ What you'll be doing:
The head of procurement and inventory manages the wider procurement and inventory team and holds responsibility for:
- Procurement strategy: Developing and executing our supplier, sourcing and inventory holding strategy, anticipating the growth of our business and external macro economical threads and opportunities on material availability and supply chain
- Supplier relations: Responsible for optimal supplier relations, supplier contracts and (re)negotiations by establishing and monitoring supplier SLA’s and KPI’s
- Risk & compliance Management: Conduct supplier risk assessments, manage third-party risk, compliance with regulations and internal policies in close collaboration with our legal team
- Forecasts: Translating business forecasts into material forecasts: ensuring sufficient material availability in all warehouses anticipating relevant supply chains and order deadlines, while keeping total stock value as low as possible and in storing a steady flow of orders into the warehouses. Keep BoM up to date in collaboration with the range team.
- Data Analysis and Reporting: Prepare regular reports to track cost savings, supplier performance, risk management outcomes, stock holding, turnover rates and stock ageing
- Quality control: Implement robust supplier quality controls in collaboration with internal QA and technical teams, ensuring the highest standards of product delivery
- Systems: Optimize usage of our WMS and ERP tool for all warehouses (both own and 3rd party) and ensure systems are up to date and accurate
- Supply chain: Manage and develop inbound supply chain processes (replenishment, PO’s, quality control, product recalls, etc.) per material category
- Supporting the category managers in executing the procurement and inventory strategy for all brands and all items, including key (re)negotiations and issue resolution
- Supporting stock managers in ensuring material availability and reliable supply chain and replenishment setup, including urgent issue resolutions
- Financials: Collaborate with finance team to ensure our stock balance, month end and stock consumption data is correctly processed and our P&L captures the right cost base for inventory used on on hand
- Footprint: Optimizing our material footprint: reduce the use of materials and lead in the transitioning to 100% sustainable material usage
- Team management: Managing the 4 FTE procurement and inventory team (2 stock managers and 2 category managers)
- Collaboration: Visit our warehouses frequently to optimize inventory management execution, the goods receiving process, to identify improvement potential and to improve collaboration.
✅ You…
- Hold a Masters degree in business, engineering or equivalent
- Have at least 5 years’ experience in a role with responsibility over procurement / purchasing / supply chain management / inventory management
- Have significant experience in an operational context that handles physical products for (in-house) D2C fulfilment and distribution
- Are an experienced people, supplier and stakeholder manager
- Are an excellent communicator with great negotiating skills
- Have attention to detail, great analytical skills and know how to handle data and large data sets
- Are entrepreneurial and self-starting
- Have a very results-oriented way of working and are a pragmatic thinker
- Are comfortable working cross functionally with (remote) teams across the business
- Are based either in the Amsterdam area (NL) or near Birmingham (UK).
✅ It would be great if you also have….
- Proven technical skills in excel/sheets
- Experience in packaging / e-commerce / lifestyle products
- Worked with ERPs and WMS
- Experience in running tenders / RFPsExperience in determining / creating strategy on procurement and inventory
- International working experience.
These are some of the skills and experience we think will enable success in this role, but please don’t worry if you are missing some of these. We’re committed to building a team made up of different strengths, skills and experiences, so if you’re excited about our values, passionate about what you do and would like to join us in doing things more thoughtfully, we’d love to hear from you.
🏡 Belonging @ Bloom & Wild
We know that we learn through our differences, and building a diverse team has always been central to creating the best experience for our customers. We value all backgrounds, perspectives, ideas and experiences, and encourage everyone to share their opinions openly within our caring and inclusive team. Our champions community actively advances our culture of inclusion and belonging, which is organised around 8 pillars of diversity. These cross-business networks offer additional opportunities for connection, education, support and celebration, and ensure that inclusivity continues to be embedded in our ways of working.
🧭 Our ways of working
We really believe in the power of connection. For us that looks different depending on the team you work in. Some of our teams work together in person every day, whereas others may connect in person every quarter.
We also believe in flexibility that supports you, the work you do, and your team. How much you work from home and from our office depends on a balance of those needs, and you’ll agree this with your manager.
Whether it’s through a shared project, a learning and development opportunity, or an afterwork social - we trust our teams to make the right decisions (for them and us) about where and how they work each day.
We’re big on collaboration, empathy, knowledge sharing and growth, and our values drive our priorities every day:
Lead change for good: we have the guts to try new things and step up to do what matters most
Think deeply, act swiftly: we make sure there’s thoughtful rationale behind our approach and always act swiftly to implement ideas
Care wildly: we pour care and creativity into everything we do and pay attention to the things that make a difference
Stay open, be curious: we’re open about what we’re doing and why, and we welcome challenges from each other
🌟 Work that works for you
To care wildly for our customers, firstly we care wildly for our teams. We work hard to craft a culture of thoughtfulness and care, where there is a strong sense of inclusion and belonging, enabling all of our people to thrive and be successful each day.
Our perks and benefits include:
⏰ Flexible working & work from abroad
🌴 25 days holiday + your birthday + flexible bank holidays, & option to buy additional holiday each year
💛 1 Volunteering day each year
🐣 Enhanced family leave and a workplace nursery scheme
🌱 A flexible training framework for every stage of your career
💐 Irresistible discounts on our products, blooms & subscriptions!
📈 Share in our success with a choice to take equity options from day 1
For more information on our perks & bens, please see www.bloomandwild.com/careers
🫱🫲 Getting hired
We know that job searching can be daunting, and we want to do everything we can to ensure that your experience with us is a good one. Interviewing is a 2-way process, and we’re keen to answer all of the questions you have, so that you can be sure (and excited!) that we’re the right move for you.
We believe in leading change for good, so if there’s anything that we can do to help you flourish throughout your application process with us, or if you have any feedback, please share this with us anonymously here so we can use this to improve your experience.
#Bloom&Wild