A Week In The Life Of A Fashion Merchandiser – Part 2

And we’re back! My career as a full-time fashion merchandiser has surprises in store every day. Let’s see what day 2 has in store for us, shall we?

TUESDAY Monday was pretty hectic, as the first day of post-market meetings always is. As soon as I got into work, I noticed that I had an email about switching our 10-4 meeting from 1-4, so I had the entire morning to check emails and mentally prepare for our meeting.

I love quiet mornings at the office because I can wrap my head around the day ahead. I get to check all of my fashion merchandiser emails, and enjoy my coffee/breakfast with my coworkers. So it’s definitely safe to say that I was pretty happy this Tuesday AM.

The day was pretty slow until 1PM, when we headed downstairs for another ATS meeting for another product category: Knits. All Merchandising teams were involved along with Sourcing, Planning, and Sales. Since we’re in charge of the actual samples, we show everyone each style as we’re going through them on our reports. As expected, this one ran over because it was a combined meeting: meaning both Wholesale, Retail and Off Price teams had to get through all of their purchased styles for Summer. We started doing things this way last season because we began noticing an overlap in certain products being bought. Now that we all meet together, we have to take into account that it takes a lot longer to get through a meeting. Which is exactly what happened this time around.

This ATS meeting was supposed to end at 4PM, but ended going till about 5PM. Of course I had 4:30PM and 5PM meetings scheduled, so those got pushed back till about 5PM. After those two quick meetings, I got back to my desk at 6PM, and got back to work. Typical follow up work for a fashion merchandiser after ATS meetings includes: Communicating dropped styles/colors, added styles/colors, and letting Sales know where they need to move units to, if necessary. As a fashion merchandiser, I also need to send any market requests to our overseas offices so they can get fabric submits into work for my team to review before going into production.

I never complain when I have to work late because it rarely happens. On this particular night, I left around 7:05PM. Not terrible. I was happy I finished my follow up work because tomorrow we have YET ANOTHER ATS meeting – last product category before the real fun begins.

Stay tuned for Part 3 next week!

CHECK OUT PART 1 HERE!

photo by sam kelly