Corporate Retail Buyer
Initially uncertain about choosing an adult career from among her interests in art, fashion and law, she postponed which path to follow until reviewing her college acceptances and discussing an education focus with trusted friends.
FAMILY BACKGROUND AND INFLUENCE
OL was the youngest (by 15 months) of two children. Her father was a literary agent with a passion for baseball, which was the topic of two books he authored. OL’s parents divorced when she was in the fourth grade, after which her mother worked as a real estate agent.
Direct family influence on OL’s career – Neither parent ever recommended that OL pursue a specific career. Their advice: “Graduate from college and then do what you are passionate about while earning enough to support yourself.”
Indirect family influence – OL’s parents always supported her extra-curricular interests. If she wanted to join an activity (e.g., an art club or writing a play for a drama club) they would enthusiastically encourage her participation (“Yes, try it!”), provide transportation and pay any dues or fees.
CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER
Spanning elementary grades through high school, OL was concurrently interested in writing, in painting and in the clothes, she could pick out for herself while aware of differences in clothing available in stores. However, she had not yet focused on a specific adult career path.
SCHOOL DAYS
OL’s public high school had a relatively small enrollment; she was one of only 40 students in her graduating class. With her high energy and goal to attend college, OL excelled in both academics and varsity sports.
While intent on enrolling in a college, OL was undecided about a college ‘major’ so she applied to 13 different colleges which individually, offered 5 different majors, including fashion merchandising, art and pre-law. OL’s plan was to see where she would be accepted and then make a final decision. However, there was one common factor among all of her applications: each college or university was much larger than her small high school!
COLLEGE
Since OL had earned multiple college acceptances, she then had to finally decide where to enroll. A significant factor in her decision was her friendship with an older girl who was still attending a college where the friend and her roommates were enjoying their experiences as fashion design majors.
Another influence was a conversation with an adult family friend, whose husband had graduated from college as a fine arts major during a significant, national economic depression; he couldn’t find a job in fine arts. But the adult friend had a business background, including computer technology, so she easily found employment when she graduated from college.
Considering all of that information, OL opted to enroll in the college where she knew students who said positive things about their experiences, which coincidentally matched OL’s strong interest in a potential adult career path.
SUMMER JOBS SERVE AS INFORMAL CAREER INTERNSHIPS
Fortunately, OL’s family lived in an area where ‘high end’ clothing retailers had stores and needed summer help. OL was able to secure summer employment as a ‘sales associate’ which involved the usual ‘low person on the totem pole’ jobs of stocking shelves and re-folding clothes which customers had tried on but not purchased. However, OL was again fortunate in that the retail clothing stores where she was working, were frequently visited by the store’s upper management, who patiently answered fashion business questions from this lowly summer employee and soon took her “under their wing” to provide details about the process of corporate “buying” based upon data regarding customer purchasing patterns and anticipating trends.
Thus, OL earned several advantages available in many brief internships:
(1) knowledge of the industry from actual participation and observation
(2) knowledge of the industry from discussions with cooperative management
(3) a network of business ‘friends’ who could be called upon for advice and as positive references for future job applications in the same type of business
FIRST CAREER JOB – NEVER A LIFETIME COMMITMENT
When OL graduated from college, having majored in fashion merchandising, the national economy was again in contraction. General unemployment numbers were rising and unlike national economic ‘boom’ times, job openings were limited. However, armed with her college degree which focused on a specific business rather than general ‘liberal arts’ plus her actual retail store experience and positive references earned from her dedicated work during her college summers, OL was hired as a “Store Manager” which was unusual since most new college graduates in the same field, would expect to start their careers as a sales associate.
OL was glad to promptly find employment and dedicated herself to being a good store manager but after a few months, was already thinking how she could find a job involving corporate retail buying. Now in the age of technology, a job search doesn’t have to start with (A) talking to friends in the business (or who might know someone in the business where you hope to land) or (B) reviewing newspaper ‘want ads’. Instead, an on-line job search is much more time efficient and specific job focused.
So, nine months after starting her first job within the overall umbrella term: “Fashion – Corporate Retail Sales”, OL was hired as an Assistant Buyer for a large clothing manufacturer with many retail store outlets featuring their own brands.
JOBS WITHIN CORPORATE RETAIL FASHION
The following jobs are the typical progression of duties and responsibilities within the business world of corporate retail fashion:
Sales Associate – Entry level position not requiring any specific education or experience background; responsible for maintaining organization of the clothing on display which has been selected and overall organized by others. This person keeps the products neatly arranged on the shelves and may retrieve additional items from storage when products on shelves are running low or at the request of a customer for a different size or color than available on display. A sales associate may never advance but remaining at this level may be the associate’s limited goal: steady employment without responsibilities involving decisions as to what clothing shall be stocked.
Assistant Buyer or Merchandise Assistant – Per the job title, assists the Buyer in many ways, including getting the correct clothing to a photo shoot (for a clothing ad), entering sales and product supply numbers into the database, returning samples to vendors, supervising the arrangement of the product upon the shelves, etc. (While these duties are not the “fun stuff” involved with deciding what to buy, the duties are necessary to learn to eventually succeed in any more responsible fashion jobs.)
Educational requirement – There is no government licensing process (as there is for physicians, plumbers, realtors, engineers, and lawyers among others) for anyone in the fashion industry but based on the experience of large fashion retailers, a business background, specifically in fashion merchandising and perhaps with some art or design courses, creates a favorable resume for employment and advancement.
Associate Buyer – Supervises the sales associates and assistant buyers; guides the decisions regarding product placement within the retail store; offers suggestions to the buyer re buyer trends noticed. May place orders per instructions of the buyer.
Buyer – Reviews quantities of products available to assess current stocking needs of each retail outlet within your geographic area of responsibility; presents proposals for buying to the Financial Planner to (hopefully) achieve authorization to place purchasing orders. Buyers typically travel 6-8 times annually for 3-5 days away on each trip, to attend trade shows to view clothes on display in different vendor’s booths (sorry, fashionistas, trade shows are not the same as more famously glamorous ‘fashion shows’ featuring live models proceeding slowly down elevated runways with celebrities in the audience).
The buyer’s proposals are based on many factors, including experience within corporate retail in earlier positions, review of current data and forecasting customers’ future clothes buying trends. (Obviously, a track record of successfully forecasting customers’ preferences earns greater and greater trust from the Financial Planner.)
Buyers decide which retail outlets will receive which merchandise for sale, based upon each store’s history plus the buyer’s predictions, which will consider opinions and suggestions by each store’s manager, but the final decisions remain with the buyer.
Buyers must be good ‘negotiators’ to persuade the planner to whom they report, to authorize all or most of the buyer’s proposals.
Financial Planner – Functions within an overall, previously approved corporate budget to purchase large amounts of clothing merchandise at wholesale (discounted) prices for sale at retail prices. The difference between the two prices is ‘profit’ but there can also be a negative difference (when paying more to purchase the goods than the eventual prices paid by the customers) which is called a ‘loss.’ It’s possible to incur an occasional loss within one product line (e.g., customers were suddenly not buying fancy clothes during the pandemic since no one was going out to dine or socialize) but the success of a financial planner is based upon creating consistent profits instead of losses.
The planner listens to the proposal of the buyer and either approves or disapproves. Since they are both members of the same corporate fashion team, often they will agree on a compromise plan for one line of merchandise (e.g., sweaters) while both might support a risky investment in another line of merchandise (e.g., jackets) if there were reasonably predictable profits overall to cover a possible, limited loss in one line of merchandise.
Planners must monitor the relevant statistics which determine profit or loss.
Manager – Responsible for coordinating the cooperation of all members of the fashion team, from assistant buyer through the buyer and financial planner. Has overall responsibility for the success of all members of the team. Prepares periodic evaluations of the performance of each team member, which is an important aspect for job promotions.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A CAREER IN CORPORATE RETAIL FASHION
Unlike careers where a government or industry ‘license’ (formal permission, without which the unlicensed individual is subject to a fine, an injunction and even jail) is required to be achieved before working (e.g., taxi drivers, attorneys, plumbers, physicians, engineers), there is no licensing requirement to commence a career within the fashion industry. So, each employer establishes their own hiring standards, which usually include a business degree. A specific degree in fashion merchandising gives the job applicant’s resume an initially favorable rating.
CAREER CHALLENGE – TRAVELING
As noted within the above, a brief description of a buyer’s activities, traveling a minimum of every other month for 3-5 days each, is part of the basic responsibilities of a buyer, to personally inspect sample merchandise. Such a schedule can cause some stress within the buyer’s personal life, especially when combined with childcare responsibilities.
CAREER CHALLENGE – IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE PERFECT PREDICTIONS
Of course, the impossibility of making perfect predictions about the future is inherent in everyone’s personal life and career, except those careers which look backwards, such as archeologists and historians. For everyone else, it’s important to correctly forecast most of the time, not all the time. Some inaccurate forecasts are more significant than others; for example: (A) no real harm – a baseball manager walks to the pitcher’s mound to remove a right handed pitcher in favor of bringing in a left-hander to pitch to a left-handed batter; however, the reliever’s first pitch results in a home run; (B) serious harm – a weather forecaster fails to accurately predict the path of a tornado, which destroys a town and kills many unsuspecting residents.
The recent covid virus pandemic is an example of a sudden and unpredictable change in consumer buying habits. Buyers and planners must constantly monitor and successfully predict fashion trends, which often vary from state to state and from store to store.
CAREER SATISFACTION
As a buyer, OL loved to consider all the merchandise purchasing possibilities for stocking the company’s retail outlets with clothes that would then (hopefully) ‘fly off the shelves’ into customers’ shopping carts. She enjoyed negotiating with planners to persuade them to fully authorize her proposals. When traveling to trade shows interfered with her home responsibilities to her child, she was pleased to be allowed to transfer within the same company, to the role of a planner, which involves no travel.
To achieve success within the corporate retail fashion industry, OL has combined her early love of fashion, her innate high energy, merchandising experience, appreciation of teamwork, negotiation skill and business background to achieve appreciation of her co-workers and management.
