Not the same job role as advertised - Anonymous employee Lands' End Employee Review

Very admin heavy role in buying and merchandising positions compared to traditional buying roles. Very systems heavy, you will spend 90% of your time doing admin work and next to no product development and if you are involved in this, there is no defined process or critical path like industry standard. There are multiple sources of truth for information which means you spend 90% of your time updating all of these any time something changes. There is no real training and you are left to piece bits of information together for yourself, it is like constant puzzle solving. You have to go hunting for basic information because there is no up to date central resource and you always have to rely on US teams to provide this information. Responsiblities can be blurred in terms of who does what between the buying and merchandising teams and people are moved from category to category basically once a month so you never have chance to fully own your area and product. Work is often dropped on to your plate at a moment’s notice and I don’t think management really have an understanding of what’s involved in a traditional clothing buying role. As someone from this background, it is extremely difficult to step into this place when there is a lack of understanding amongst the team of the process required to produce good product. I was brought in to be utilised for my industry skills on a category I’m very familiar with but was then actually placed on a category where none of this was required. You are unable to get involved in changing anything for the better through fear of upsetting the relationship with the US team. It can be an extremely frustrating role when you are a thorough and meticulous product person. You won’t be utilised to your strengths if this is the case as they don’t value new and varying points of view. Team culture is tolerable but can be two faced and backstabbing and people are very quick to discuss others so best not to get too personally involved with colleagues. It’s a shame because there are a few genuinely lovely people. Most people on the team have worked their way up in the company, into their roles, rather than experiencing buying elsewhere so have no idea how traditional buying works. Head of department has a very unorganised management style and their ever-changing mood often permeates throughout the department to cause a sense of anxiety. Also, don’t expect to be taken seriously by department leads when reporting something you’re uncomfortable with. When you do decide to leave, you will be shunned by colleagues and won’t even get so much as an email or phone call to say goodbye. I think a few team members are quite unhappy within their roles and it shows. I wouldn’t recommend working here if you’ve worked for other retailers with clear, defined processes. Working day often finishes later than advertised hours due to meetings with US parent company / unmanageable workloads and you are expected to do a lot of work which is outside of your job role.