Week 2 - Day 2 - Merchandising

I met with the junior merchandiser for briefs and shape wear today and had a lot of questions about what her job actually entails. She sat down with me for quite some time and explained how the merchandisers use the critical path in a completely different way to the buyers, focusing on analysing the sales. She also explained in detail, the complete life cycle of a product.

• Designers source trend ideas and colours for the season
  
• Designer then creates a mood board and submits designs to supplier


• Supplier selects designs they have that would suit company


• Buyer chooses designs and fabrics from supplier to suit collection


• Supplier makes up samples of chosen designs


• Buyer makes changes and costs item
  
• Merchandising and Buying decide how many units and where


• Buyer confirms delivery date with supplier


• Quality control fit and test samples


• Once item is perfect, buyers seal the item with a 'gold seal' and release order for delivery


• Supplier arranges delivery date into warehouse with merchandiser


• Merchandising team discuss allocation date and stock level


• Delivery arrives in warehouse
  
• Order gets allocated


• Style arrives in store


• Merchandising team watch for sales reactions

The whole thing made much more sense once I knew the cycle that the product goes through from start to finish and it was much nicer to know where in the process my role was currently fitting in.

I attended a fit session for briefs in the afternoon. Most of the samples from AW10 is at the final gold seal stage so some initial fittings for SS11 were also carried out. There were a lot of things wrong with the initial buying samples from SS11 and the garment technician Sally, had to alter almost every brief that was fitted onto the model. Once the garment had been pinned to demonstrate the correct measurements, the garment was photographed and emailed to the supplier along with detailed notes for adjustments.