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Buying and Beyond
Welcome to the Buying & Beyond podcast, the podcast for all things Retail Buying...and more!
Join us, Kate & Lyns, buyers and best friends, each week for industry insights, stories and expertise from real people in retail.
Enjoy honest stories and conversations, retail therapy and learn bite-sized tips from us and our guests from across the industry.
- Season 1 starts with Becoming a Buyer - the background to how we started in the industry, what exactly is a Buyer, working your way up the ladder and the main meetings and tasks working in Buying
- Season 2 is all about Being a Buyer - leading a team, coordinating trips, working with suppliers, product & personal development and sustainability
- Season 3 takes us beyond just the direct Buying team - we introduce merchandisers, talk about designers and new trends, burnout & life coaching.
- Season 4 is where we are joined by more Retail Buyers and have also invited Retail Businesses to tell us their stories
- Season 5 continues with a fantastic assortment of Retail Buyers and Retail Businesses. We find out how they got started and what inspires & excites them about retail - plus we lift the lid on what Brands need and Buyers expect!
We are your modern day mentors; prepping Buyers of the future and empowering current Buyers. Our insights for retail businesses and entrepreneurs will shine a light on how to to build, grow, scale and pitch like a pro!
If you like listening to this podcast, please rate, follow and share - you can also find us on instagram @buyingandbeyond
Come behind the scenes with Buying and Beyond
Episodes
109 episodes
S10 E4 Why Consistency Is The Silver Bullet with Fran Pittaway, CEO at Biscuiteers
In this episode, we chat to Fran Pittaway, CEO of Biscuiteers, the UK's original hand-iced biscuit gifting brand. Fran's career path is anything but conventional - from working in TV production at the BBC, to building the first-ever buying team...
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S10 E3 How Weather Quietly Reshapes Buying Strategy, Sales and Shopper Behaviour
In this episode of Buying Beyond we dive into one of retail's biggest unspoken variables - the weather, and how it quietly reshapes shopper behavior, sales patterns, and buying strategy.We kick off discussing the current UK heatwave befo...
S10 E2 Why The Best Buyers Can Buy Anything with Natasha Caller, Head of Category at Halfords
This week, we're joined by Natasha Caller, Head of Category at Halfords, whose buying career proves that the best buyers aren't defined by what they buy - they're defined by how they think.Natasha's journey into buying didn't follow a tr...
S10 E1 The Secret Tool: Inside the World of Trend Forecasting with Jane Kellock
This week, we're joined by Jane Kellock, Founder and Creative Director of Unique Style Platform (USP), one of the UK's leading trend forecasting consultancies.Jane's career has taken her from designing womenswear and leading design teams...
S9 E10 Jo Ingham & Jo Ward: How Fashion can be more sustainable and still be profitable?
This week, we're joined by Jo Ingham and Jo Ward - two buyers who have pretty much seen it all.The pair first met at New Look (where they were so often mistaken for each other that they ended up answering each other's phone calls) before...
S9 E9 From Manchester to Japan: The Buyer's Guide to Trend Spotting
This week it's just the two of us - no guests, no agenda, just a good old buyers' debrief. A few weeks ago we headed to Manchester for the Buying and Beyond meetup, and naturally that meant hitting the shops. What followed was a wide-ranging co...
S9 E8: From Lockdown Idea to Luxury Brand with Elena London
In this Buying & Beyond, we sit down with Elena, founder of Elena London, a luxury home fragrance brand she built from scratch during lockdown after becoming frustrated with reed diffusers that seemed to lose their scent within day...
S9 E7: From Buyer to Bangladesh with Nadya at NEXT
What does it actually look like to leave the familiarity of UK retail buying and move to Dhaka, Bangladesh, to work on the supplier side? In this episode, we sit down with Nadya - a buyer turned product manager at Next Sourcing- who did exactly...
S9 E6:What Really Went Wrong With Debenhams with Retail Strategist Lucy Horden
This week we're joined by Lucy Horden, a commercial retail strategist who spent over 15 years at Debenhams working across franchise operations, brand partnerships, and business strategy. Lucy takes us inside one of the UK's most iconic departme...
S9 E5: Katie Williams: Burnout, Boundaries, and Life After Retail
In this episode we sit down with Katie Williams - former senior merchandiser at Topman and Quiz Clothing, psychotherapist, and founder of her own coaching business - to talk about the realities of building a career in fashion retail, what burno...
S9 E4: Why the Best Buyers Watch More Than Just Their Category
In this week's episode, Kate and Lyns dive deep into one of their favourite subjects - retail - and why staying commercially aware is one of the most powerful tools a buyer can have. From trade meeting horror stories (hello, & Other Stories...
S9 E3: The Career Tool Most Buyers Never Think to Use with Levanah Gates, The Buyer's Coach
This week we're joined by Levanah Gates, The Buyer's Coach -a former buying manager at M&S, Tesco, BHS, Fat Face, and George (Asda)- who now coaches buyers and retail professionals to build confidence, gain clarity, and navigate the fast-pa...
S9 E2: Navigating a Non-Linear Career in Fashion with Lynsey Scoins
In this episode, we're joined by Lynsey Scoins — a fashion industry veteran with over 15 years of experience across design, buying, merchandising and recruitment, and founder of Fashion Path, a platform dedicated to helping people break into an...
S9 E1: From the Supplier Side: Holly Stafford Smith on Buying, Business & Building for the Future
This week, we’re joined by Holly Stafford Smith from GH Stafford & Son limited a fourth-generation family business that’s been supplying leather goods and accessories to retailers across the UK and Ireland since 1947.Holly gives us a...
S8 E10: Building Brands That Stand the Test of Time with Jodie Blake CMO at Manolo Blahnik
This week's episode is a special one co-host Lynsey is joined by her old friend and former London College of Fashion classmate, Jodie Blake, now CMO at Manolo Blahnik. What starts as a nostalgic trip down memory lane (lemon poppy seed muf...
S8 E9: From Buyer to Supplier: A Journey Through the World of Food with Claire McIlroy
Claire McIlroy returns to the pod for a deep dive into the fascinating and surprisingly complex world of grocery buying. Having started her career on the buying side at DHL and Morrisons before moving into sales and her current role as Sales Di...
S8 E8: Ginny & Me- Pre-Order Power & The Rise of Social-First Brands
In this episode, Yasmin O’Donnell shares the story behind Ginny & Me a social-first fashion brand that has quickly built a cult following around its hero flared-sleeve windbreaker jacket. What began in her Oxford Brookes University bedroom,...
S8 E7: Introducing... The Buyers Club
In this special episode, we’re doing something a little different. Before we dive into our usual conversations, we’re sharing something we’ve been working on behind the scenes for a while- the launch of The Buyer’s Club.This has b...
S8 E6: What It Really Takes to Scale a Rental Fashion Business with Lyndsay Mason
In this episode, we sit down with Lyndsay Mason, founder and CEO of For The Creators, a business transforming maternity and early parenthood fashion through a sustainable rental model. What began as a personal frustration with the lack of styli...
S8 E5 Burnout Isn’t a Badge of Honour with Janine McManus
This week we’re joined by Janine McManus - former fashion buyer, therapeutic coach and founder of We Beam - for a powerful and honest conversation about burnout, identity and redefining success.Janine began her career as a print designer...
S8 E4: From Fashion Buying to Building Club Mera with Amy Rollings
In this episode, we sit down with Amy Rollings, a commercial leader with over 20 years of experience at some of the world’s most influential fashion and lifestyle brands, including Burberry, Michael Kors, Kurt Geiger and Pangaia. Amy takes us o...
S8 E3: Podcast LIVE at Top Drawer - Getting started in AI with Hannah Adams
This week’s episode is split into two parts.The first was recorded live at Top Drawer back in January, where we sat down with Hannah Adams to talk about AI and what it really means for buyers and brands.The second dives into Hanna...
S8 E2: From shop floor lessons to commercial confidence in FMCG with Dahlia Stroud
S8 EP2 From shop floor lessons to commercial confidence with Dahlia StroudThis week we’re joined by Dahlia Stroud, a retail and FMCG leader whose career spans Nestlé, Asda and Co-op, where she’s led commercial strategy, online trading an...
S8 E1: Behind every great product, is a product tech with Claire Ward, Senior Product Technologist at Mint Velvet
This week we are joined by Claire Ward- a senior product technologist. This episode is a particularly special one for us. Claire, Kate and Lyns all met right at the very beginning of our careers at Accessorize, learning the ropes of retail toge...
S7 E10: Progress Over Perfection: Making Circular Fashion Work at Scale with Nick Lambert, Head of Circularity at Primark
This week’s episode is a big one and a conversation we’ve been really excited to share. We’re joined by Nick Lambert, Head of Circularity at Primark, whose career journey is a powerful example of how deep commercial experience can drive r...