Oasis Day 5

Today consisted of doing odd bits and bob jobs that'd I'd done last week. I did learn what ROS meant today, and it means Rate Of Sale, which is the rate at which an item is predicted to sell out. It is dependent on how many sales it makes in a day/week. The lower the ROS the better, as it means it sells out quickly meaning more sales. I'm pretty proud I remembered it.

I think my brain is coming around to this whole maths and numbers thing. I don't want to jinx it but I bet I have now..

People I've met count: 6
No. of things learnt: 11
Brain ache scale: 2/10

I may just do a round up come Friday (my last day) of my experience of merchandising as a whole and Oasis, what do ya think? I think I'm gonna do it...

Oasis Day 4

With it being my fourth day, I'm in more of a morning routine now, getting on with the previous days daily sales, and then carrying on with other tasks I hadn't finished from the previous day.

I was then shown how to fill in the best and worst sheets, unlike the other day when all I had to do was to print them. This meant I got to look at the pictures of the product which was a bit more exciting to me than the spreadsheets. Although, of course, it ended up being a lot more mathematical than that, and looking a the main DS to fill out its core information. There were a lot and I mean A LOT of these to fill in and I only had till 3 to finish as then the office was starting to set up for their Christmas party. So I'm sure I'll be picking this back up as on Monday. Unless it was needed for Friday and in that case the MAA Steph would have finished it for me...

Friday was a bit of a write-off as I wasn't very well so didn't go in. Slightly worried I may have forgotten how to do things by tomorrow as I've been off for three days now but I'm sure I'll pick it up in no time.

People I've met count: 6
No. of things learnt: 10
Brain ache scale: 4/10

Here I go into my final week! 

Oasis Day 3

Today was significantly better than expected. I was dreading doing the daily sales report by myself this morning but it was a lot less painful than I thought. I think my mood lifted when I'd restored faith in myself that I could actually do it un-aided.

For the first hour as I said I completed the daily sales for jersey and denim, and was slightly relieved I didn't have to do accessories. I then completed checking the cost prices from the day before, which is one of the jobs I liked so things only began to get better. Steph had mentioned adding images from the Oasis site onto the Best & Worst spreads the day before but I think I ran out of time so today all I had to do was get these ready and print and photocopy them ready for each departments meeting with the directors - trying to do this when your printer wont cooperate is a bit of a challenge but got there in the end. As the name suggests, these are a selection or up to 10 of the best and worst sellers from the previous season. As they're focussing on SS14, this involved using SS13 information to help see what they wanted to use this season, colour or style wise.

I was also shown how to add to the Ratio Banks. These are (yes, you guessed it) spreadsheets that work out the ratio of what stock is sold of a certain item and if we over or underestimated the amount of stock we've got. For example on a certain top we expected to sell 3% of it but actually sold 8%, which shows us we need to be sending more out as it's clearly a big hit. When I'm explained these things, I understand it, but trying to explain it in my own words is such a struggle, gah.

Using my knowledge of the daily sales, I also learnt how to check these for whole sale. As you may or may not know, Oasis are also available on ASOS and on other sites such Zalando, Koovs and Little Woods, so we need to make sure the cost price, product code, name of the product etc are correct so they know what they're selling the product at and what to call it. So this is important. As I was saying to Steph earlier, I've seen some brands on ASOS selling things at a cheaper price than the brand itself and it's obviously down to this - pretty cool!

I think that about sums up today, the only real thing I struggled with was checking the whole sale DS so not bad!

People I've met count: 8
No. of things learnt: 12
Brain ache scale: 3/10 - getting better.
See ya tomorrow!

Oasis Day 2

Another day, another spreadsheet. Today was another day of being shown how to input information into the merchandisers excel documents under jersey, denim and accessories. Of course they all have totally different ways of doing the same thing just to make it that much easier for me.. joke.

Today was mainly about learning how to do the daily sales. I met another MAA called Stephanie who has been with the company for 3 months so far, as Nicola has now left so Steph is the person I go to if I need help.

Daily sales is pretty self explanatory - if you don't include all the numbers. It involves working out basically what all the stores took the previous day, but only in the jersey, denim and accessory departments. Using sheets that have been filled out but the company director already with figures, it's a case of inputting these figures into the correct places on the spreadsheet and a percentage is worked out for you (thank god). But there is some maths involved, something you have to do some timing and working out the percentage to time it by yourself, which is where I tend to get confused.

After this, I was then shown how to produce labels. These are used by the buyers in all the meets, as they hang off the garments they talk about it. It contains all that particular garments details such as what its sold the previous week, or what week it's coming in etc etc. Stephen then asked me to check the cost price of some jersey that had come in, and making sure what we had down on paper matched with the online documents. This involved using a programme called Mercatus which contains A LOT of info for the merch teams but I've only used it for reports and this so far. This was quite a fun task, and only involved ticking off ones that matched and marking down which ones where wrong and flagging it with steph.

One of my last tasks of the day was checking the input reports. This is a way of tracking when each shipment of stock is coming in, and again to see if what we had printed matched. I think I'll only need to do this when Jenna, the senior merch for denim, asks me to look up something so that won't be a daily routinely task.

These posts will probably lack a lot of imagery as i'm not allowed to take photos in the office, and doubt you want to see pictures of huge excel sheets with a load of numbers on.

People I've met count: 6
No. of things learnt: 7
Brain ache scale: 7/10 - this isn't good.

See ya after day three!

Oasis Day 1

As part of my second year at uni, I've got to go on a min 6 week placement, and I've decided to do two- (well more made too since I couldn't do longer at one.) My first one is at Aurora Fashions with Oasis in the merchandising department. I've never dabbled in merchandising before and don't really know too much about it apart from that it's quite numbers based which isn't my strength, but I wanted to see if I'd actually like it.

The office is based in Shoreditch (so fashion darling) and they share it with other Aurora based companies such as Coast and Karen Millan. So at half 9 on the dot (was meant to get there for 10, but I'm forever early) I stepped into the building and was greeted by Lisa who is part of HR, and she showed me round quickly and did the usual health and safety bits. Then I was introduced to Jenna, the head of denim merch and her MMA Nicola, who are both part of the merch team. The office is laid out in a sort of semi-circle shape and on the right side of the semi-circle are rows of desks with 4-5 merchandisers on one side and vice versa on the other but with buyers so it's they're opposite each other, and every desk is the same.

One of the first things Jenna explained is that the department is split up into sections, she, as I said, is in charge of denim, and she also sits with Yasmin, who is part of jersey merch. At 11:45 on a Monday, the whole floor has a meeting where the company director does an over view of the previous week, sales wise and then each sub-department presents to everyone else. They used a lot of terms which I noted down to get meanings for such as like-for-like and ROS but it is only day 1, so I'm sure I'll pick it up by the end of my time there. As this is was the first real thing I was part of on the day, it all sounded very complicated, but by the high praise the company director, the previous week had been a good one, as they made £4.7 million. Each department showed a variety of best sellers and some which didn't sell to much. Do to the season it was mainly SS wear they're pushing, but knitwear and coats took a majority of the profit.

Straight after the meeting, with the aid of Nicola, I had to fill in the company flows for denim and jersey. As they sell a variety of denim, as well as leg lengths, this was a lengthy process. This also involved using Excel, which I'm quite rusty on, especially being so used to Mac's and they use PC so it took a couple of goes to get back into the swing of things, but was alright pretty quickly. A lot of it involved just imputing data the department had already worked out using BOB spreadsheets, and each section of the department has a different BOB number. However, some other sheets, such as the company flows involved more mathematical thought. Each section I had to fill in had a shortened name which I'm obviously not used to so remembering which one meant what and collecting the right data to input was a challenge. I then moved onto the accessories department to do similar tasks to end the afternoon.

To say my first day was a challenge would be an understatement, but the heads of departments I worked with where really helpful, and were always eager to explain again when I found things difficult

People I've met count: 5
No. of things learnt: 3
Brain ache scale: 4/10

I will report back with day two tomorrow! Hopefully it wont be as lengthy.

Hello I'm Paul Smith

The Paul Smith exhibition at the Design Museum opened last week. It offers visitors a deep insight into the designers work and life. Curated my Donna Loveday, Head of Curatorial at the Design Museum; she hopes it'll be as ever popular as the Louboutin one, which broke all previous visitor record - wow. I went to see that one and must say, it's a tough act to follow.

The retrospective is set out in the stages of his life, starting with the starting up of his very first store - a compact 3m/3m space opened in Nottingham in 1970 which visitors can walk through to get a feel for what the original store was like. It'll also features a makeshift version of the designers office, full of curious objects he's collected on his travels and plenty of artwork.

The exhibition seems cute and quant, providing an in depth insight into the designers private world. In true Design Museum style, it's full of content, yet finally laid out in a simplistic manor. Even if you're not a fan of Paul Smith, I would go see it as part of a day out between Christmas and March. You can book different time slots via Ticketweb, with night showings available as well. Tickets start at £13.27 for adults and £8.40 for students, booking fees may apply.

The Beckham's Give Back

Victoria has rightly so earned her place within the fashion industry, with pure hard work and determination - even if she does say she doesn't have a nanny help her with Harper, huc hum...

Her and the glorious David Beckham have been a golden couple since the early 90's and have been seen in some cracking outfits that have become iconic. Amidst the recent tragic Typhoon in the Philippines, the Beckham's have decided to give a little back in the way of fashion.

They're donated a range of these iconic outfits to the Red Cross charity, more than 20 boxes to be precise, with proceeds going to help people affected by the typhoon Haiyan.

Shoes ranging from Jimmy Choo, to Manolo Blahnik

Of course everyone knows Victoria is also known for her rather slim frame, and with the average size of a women in the UK now being a size 16, women are hopeful to attempt to fit in some of her garments. Thank god for shoes eh. But I guess the whole point of it would be to just own something that has been in the graces of the Victorias presents of even just in her wardrobe; that's how I'd see it anyway. 

The queue for the Kensington Red Cross branch where the garments were donated was humongous, as desperate buyers waited to hopefully buy a piece of the celebrities. It's such a shame to hear though that people were lucky enough to have bought items, listed them just hours later on eBay, to pocket hundreds of pounds potentially from them. The act of donating is sort of lost by doing this, and I'd feel very disappointed if I were these people. I guess it is hard to crack down on eBayers in this sense, as I know this happens a lot with sold out Zara items that 'bloggers' have.

A rather 'Saturday Night Fever-esq' suit worn by the one and only David B himself

Did you manage to get anything?

Battle Of The Brands

As you know, Isabel Marant has collaborated with H&M and Kate Bosworth was relived by Topshop. But it hasn't seemed to stop there. Topshop have now endorsed their 4th designer collaboration with Meadham Kirchhoff! The high street brands are really going at this Christmas to get shoppers out of other brands and into theirs - and rightly so, it is the season for good will and all that, but nothing wrong with a healthy bit of competition is there...

The collection is just 'cooky' to say the least, with goofy monster faces on knits to flaming headbands. If you would describe your style as minimalist you better stay well clear. Topshop has had many a success with its designer collabs in the past and I'm sure this one will follow suit. Whether you'd pick your office Christmas party outfit from the range? I'm not sure, but there's certainly a market out there for it. On the Topshop website, it describes the collection as 'kitsch' and kitsch it is.

So who did it best? Isabel for H&M of Kirchhoff for Topshop? Personally, I feel Kirchhoff will do better, sales-wise, but Isabel is more my style. What do you guys think? 

Lush Ft. Vivienne Westwood

I recently did a post on Vivienne Westwood collaborating with The Cambridge Satchel Company and other heritage brands. She has now decided to dip her toe into the skin care industry-

Lush, the cosmetic brand who pride themselves on using all natural ingredients in their products used to use paper to wrap up their goodies for customers. That however is all about to change. Westwood has designed a range of scarves Lush can now use to wrap up their products to cut back on the use of paper to help support Vivienne's cause Climate Revolution. In this time of good will and giving, enough wrapping paper is used to going around the world, wait for it.... 9 TIMES! That's just staggering. So these scarves are to help promote saving the environment and that it's not about the wrapping but the gift inside.

So the aim of the game is to look out for the environment. So you gain a nice smelly bath bomb this christmas with a Viv Westwood designed scarf. I know I'm definitely popping down my nearest store to get one, but are you?

For more info visit her site: http://climaterevolution.co.uk/wp/

Model Moment

With the British Fashion Awards fast approaching (8 days time to be precise) and one of the main awards being model of the year, it got me thinking about who my favourite models are and one of my recent obsessions, Suki Waterhouse, I just think she's so stunning, and I wish my hair would look like that, le sigh. She also has major female envy since nabbing Bradley Cooper. So here are a few of my fav snaps of suki, enjoy!

Fashion That Cares

In a mist of brands co-endorsing collections for fashion brands more than ever recently, we've also had an influx of brands and good causes. One prime example is MAC cosmetics and their Viva Glam collections. One of the most recent ones is Viva Glam Nicki, which features Nicki Minaj fronting a selection of lipsticks, with a different packaging to the iconic MAC black bullets where all profits go towards women, men and children living with HIC/AIDS. The colours are totally original and separate from MACs own mammoth lipstick range. This I think was a clever ploy on MAC's behalf, as any loyal make-up brand follower love anything limited edition as it's something that not every will have. They also feel less guilty when purchasing it as you think 'well, I'm technically giving money straight to charity therefore it's acceptable to spend £15 on a lipstick..' They also have a matching lipglass along side the lipstick going for £14. Now they're back with the original RuPaul, who MAC first featured back in 1994! I just love the tackiness of it I've got to say.

Another brand targeting AIDS is Maison Martin Margiela with their printed tees. Similarly to MAC, MMM started producing t-shirts for the charity 'AIDES' a french charity fighting to help those living with the virus. Each year they change up the colour and print the same logo on each. They're slightly more steep on the price compared to MAC going for €75, but it's all for charity eh.

Kim Kardashian has also put a load of her clothes on ebay to go towards the Philippines Typhoon Haiyan aid more recently, but it comes with a big however. It has been revealed that only 10% of the earnings ACTUALLY goes towards the help! This is a total cop-out on Kimmys part, a women reportedly worth 40 million, she's not exactly strapped for cash! So when there's some brands out to look after their image and help good causes, there are also some people who just, aren't. Shame on you Kimmy K.

Alexander McQueen & Damien Hirst Scarf Collaboration

When I first heard about this collaboration, my head nearly fell off with excitement! McQueen's scarfs are iconic and anyone blind bat would be able to recognise one from a mile away so I just knew a collaboration of some sort as going to be coming soon. Damien Hirst is one of my favourite artists, and after visiting his exhibition at The Tate earlier this year, it just reaffirmed my love for his work so you can't really blame me for being over the moon when I hear he's joining with also one of my favourite british designers.

His butterfly pieces are so known and glorious in the flesh, it seems only right they do a mash of of this with the skull print. I don't think a sheep or shark in formaldehyde would make much of a good print to be honest...

With his silk chiffon skull scarves starting from £165, these could not be further from that - the starting price for these one off's is £315, going all the way to a steep £715. It definitely confirms they'll be forever on my wish list. I'm yet to visit them in the shops but they're almost sold out online after being out a mere 3 days - surprise surprise.

The advertising via Youtube is stunning and captures the image beautifully and only makes me want one more - check it out below.

Moving Up For Marant

Isabel Marant's collection H&M has been massively anticipated for months and it finally hit the shelves last Friday and it has sold out so fast, H&M's online site over-sold it. It's continuing to over-sell to its costumers, many of them have received apology emails as they've had to cancel their orders. Well if there was any doubt that the collection would fair I'm sure it has faded, and fast.

I myself wasn't too fussed about the collection seeing the lookbook before the release, but after hearing about the sell out, it's made me want to revisit it. I've seen an overside black and while fluffy coat on a few women out and about which I wasn't crazy about to start with, but after seeing it on someone, it's definitely growing on me. The sequin trousers had me for a second also, but maybe after I've dropped a couple of pounds haha.

However, this internet glitch may have cost them not just on internet sales, but in store sales also. Costumers are reportedly so disappointed in the brands e-commerce they're calling it a 's*** show' and boycotting the whole collaboration altogether! This just shows the power that brands have by having an online presence these days; people no longer want or have to push their way through crowds of people when they can be in the comfort of their own home and still be able to access brands collaborations. Fair enough, you're not the only one having the same idea by waiting up till late to be the first on there, and even then sites can crash if they can't cope with large amounts of traffic. However it still doesn't stop people sitting and refreshing for hours on end.

What did you make of the collection? Any stand-out pieces for you?