Our contact began their career managing a food store for a well-known retail brand, where they thrived in the fast-paced environment, enjoying the challenges of managing and communicating with a diverse team to deliver a commercially successful strategy. They quickly transitioned into food buying, with initial training in supply chain management. These early roles were followed by buying categories ranging from pizzas and fish to juice, where they honed their end-to-end retail buying, negotiation, and relationship-building skills. This experience set the stage for the last 15 years in the produce sector, where they discovered their true passion for procurement, varietal and product innovation, and farming, as well as sales. Their work culminated in service provision models and direct procurement from growers across several fruit categories. Throughout their career, they have consistently driven sales, profit, and market share growth, aided by strong analytical skills and an understanding of market evolution and consumer needs.
Their passion, work ethic, and approachable style have created highly motivated and focused teams within both retailers and multiple suppliers. As a strategic thinker, they have developed continuous improvement plans between retailers and suppliers, enhancing availability through new sources and growers, innovative promotional mechanics, and additional space and marketing through strong internal multidisciplinary collaboration. CIPS qualified, they have also mentored many less experienced buyers and was recently rated best business performer in an online gap negotiation course.
In their next role, they aims to leverage her extensive knowledge of produce procurement mechanics, alongside her commercial, negotiation, and product innovation skills, to transform raw materials into consistently available products at attractive prices for UK consumers. They seek to generate ongoing profitable growth throughout the supply chain. They are eager to build new grower relationships in the UK and abroad, maintaining and creating sustainable and ethical supply chains with a focus on continuous improvement in product quality and cost-effective delivery.
They are open to both retail buying and procurement roles, with a passion for working with fruit growers and produce being their priority over the specific position in the supply chain, believing they can add significant value in either capacity.
Contact Max MacGillivray on +44 (0)1284 715055 or contact the Redfox team directly by CLICKING HERE and quote Reference: 1025686.
