Retail Sales Manager

Following our latest development, we need to strengthen our management team by recruiting a dynamic manager to manage a team of 13 and a department covering 16,000 square feet.  Full time including Saturdays or Sundays. Responsible to the General Manager and MD for managing a team with responsibility for customer service, buying, merchandising and stock control. Must have in depth experience of leading teams in a retail environment with ability to organise and inspire a diverse range of people. Must also be hard working, trustworthy, committed, flexible, motivated, practical and willing to get hands dirty.

Only candidates with a combination of 3 or more of the following will be considered:

• garden centre or similar retail experience (eg a supermarket or large DIY store)
• horticultural qualifications
• strong sales and merchandising skills
• experience of using EPOS systems
• experience of managing teams of 6 or more

Garden Centre Manager

Exceptionally well qualified and experienced candidates for the above position may be considered the broader and more senior role of Garden Centre Manager, directly accountable for all departments including Retail Sales, Catering and the Nursery, and a team of 30.  This role is currently filled by one of the directors.  To be considered for this role a candidate must demonstrate strong horticultural knowledge, garden centre experience (or a large, multi-disciplinary retail store) and success in managing multi-disciplinary teams of at least 20 people.  Successful candidates would join the directors on the senior management board and the position of Retail Sales Manager would not be filled in the medium term.

Vacancy filled

Cook Shop Supervisor

Part time (3 or 4 days per week) or full time and including a Saturday or Sunday.  Responsible for serving customers and giving high quality advice on the selection of goods in the Cook Shop, merchandising, managing the Cook Shop stock room, overseeing and processing Cook Shop internet sales and ordering, receiving, checking and pricing stock.  Some retail experience required.  Must also have a keen interest in cooking.

Cook Shop Sales Assistant

Part time (up to 4 days per week) or full time and including a Saturday or Sunday and working between 6 and 8½ hours a day in the Cook Shop or gift areas according to business needs. Responsible for assisting customers, giving high quality advice on the selection of goods, processing internet sales and receiving, checking, pricing and displaying stock.  Keen interest in cooking essential.  Retail experience an advantage.

Marketing Assistant

The Company is growing extremely quickly and now needs to start building a team dedicated to providing professional marketing support to the Business Development Director.  The role of the team will incorporate management of the customer databases and the Diamond Reward Card scheme, regular updates to the content and look and feel of the 2 websites, organisation of customer events, production of point of sale material and customer signage and occasional placement of external advertisements.  More importantly, the team will be responsible for growing the new internet and mail order sales business and for all customer communications.  The latter will include the requirement to research and write articles for the websites and customer newsletters, production of the bi-annual Gardening Matters magazine and regular customer communication via social networking sites.  The Company has just appointed a new marketing agency to assist with many of the above functions and is ready to appoint the first member of the new marketing team. 

The position can be part time (minimum 3 days per week) or full time.  No experience of marketing or sales is required but the successful candidate must be educated to degree level in a non vocational subject, able to demonstrate experience in researching articles and writing essays, extremely articulate in written English, very competent in the use of Word and Excel and experienced in the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  These skills will be tested as part of the recruitment process.  Many of the tasks to be fulfilled are of a repetitive nature (eg loading new products onto the internet sales website and entering data onto the customer databases) and thus the candidate must also be able to work conscientiously and largely unsupervised whilst maintaining accuracy and attention to detail.  Above all the successful candidate must overtly display energy and enthusiasm.