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.
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