Merchandising Buying interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Walk me through your most impressive category, item launch, or assortment decision.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.
4. Why merchandising / buying — and why specialty retail specifically?
5. Why specialty retail and not a department store, mass retailer, or pure DTC brand?
6. Why the firm?
7. When a customer is choosing between the firm and a top competitor for the sector, what's the assortment-level reason she ends up with the firm?
8. Which categories at the firm look healthy right now, and where would you focus the next round of investment?

Technical concepts to master

• Open-to-buy (OTB) — the buyer's working budget

  Open-to-buy (OTB) — the equation · MFP — Merchandise Financial Plan · GMROI — Gross Margin Return on Inventory

• The four-pillar merchandising framework — right product / price / place / time

  Right product · Right price · Right place · Right time

• Fashion / seasonal flow vs. replenishment / basics — two different commercial models

  Replenishment / basics — the model · Fashion / seasonal flow — the model · The blend — how a buyer manages both

Practical drills

• You have a category with $10M planned net sales for the season, planned markdowns of $1M, planned ending inventory of $2M at retail, beginning inventory of $3M at retail, and on-order receipts of $4M at retail. What's your remaining OTB? Six weeks into a 12-week season you've shipped $4.2M of sales against a $5M plan-to-date. What's the sell-through gap, and what does that imply for the OTB position?
• You are taking over the the sector category. Last season ended with $20M net sales, 65% regular-price sell-through, 22% markdown rate, and 52% net realised gross margin. You have a flat comp target ($20M) and a 100bp margin improvement target (53% net realised gross margin). Walk me through how you'd plan the season.
• Pitch me an item, brand, or assortment edit you'd recommend the firm add to the the sector category for next season. 5 minutes prep, 5 minutes delivery.

Smart-question anchors

• Category investment priorities — which categories the senior merchant team is leaning into for the next 12-24 months and what the gating economic signal looks like
• Buyer-planner partnership — how OTB and MFP discipline work in practice across the buyer-planner table and where the friction lives
• Private label and exclusive brand strategy — penetration target, owned-brand capability investment, and where private label competes vs. complements national brands
• Vendor partnership philosophy — exclusive windows, co-op marketing dollars, return-to-vendor norms, and how the {firm_name}'s scale shapes vendor terms
• In-season reactivity and markdown discipline — how the team's markdown cadence and trigger criteria have evolved, and the cultural appetite for in-season pivots

Sourced from

National Retail Federation (NRF) — buyer and merchant career resources · RIS News and Retail Dive — operational benchmarks and category leadership commentary · McKinsey & Company — Retail Practice publications on assortment and pricing · Harvard Business School — retail case studies (e.g. Zara, Lululemon, Sephora cases) · Wall Street Oasis, Glassdoor, and Reddit r/retail buyer interview threads