My feeling is that if someone is to be successful in this business, they have to be self-confident and they have to be willing to make decisions. If they can't do that, they'll get eaten alive. I'll give you a specific example. A new buyer goes into the market, walks into a resource, and says, "I need 500 units at 25 percent off," praying that that's what they'll get. The resource says "Okay, you can have them." The next buyer walks in and wants the exact same merchandise and says to the resource, "I need that at 40 percent off, I need 3,000, and I need them the day after tomorrow on my dock." They may work something out, so that the buyer gets 1,500 units at a third off and there next week. The experienced buyer is the one who can find a middle point, because what they really needed was a third off, not 40 percent. People who are meek and mild and afraid to make a decision, who don't have a strong base, and who aren't self-confident can't be successful as a merchant. That's the nature of this business.
Q - Is it difficult to buy an item that you're unfamiliar with?
A - It was difficult at first. It's really all according to how adaptable an individual is. It took me about three months to be able to properly identify the merchandise I was buying, to put myself in the customer's viewpoint. But then there's the old adage that a good retailer can buy anything. You can buy pots and pans, you can buy dresses, you can buy furniture.
About a year before I left, I became acting women's glove buyer. At the time it was kind of hard to get enthused about four fingers and a thumb, but it was interesting because they got a lot of import business in the glove department. I suppose that if I would have stayed a little longer, I would have probably made quite a few European trips and so forth.
Q - How are individuals evaluated in retailing?
A - Volume, markdown percentage, and gross margin dollars and percentage are what we're evaluated on. Goals are set from year to year. When I got my review this year, we set goals for the coming year. The goals are always higher than our actual plan, so we strive to hit those goals.
Q - What do you like about the job?
A - I get the feeling that I have my own little business, and I have a tremendous sense of ownership about what I'm doing. If my business is good, I feel good about it. If it's not good, it's a rather personal thing. It has its advantages and disadvantages.
Flexibility. The ability to make decisions on my own. I like the interaction with people. I can interact with people and can find out what's going on in the whole store, so I can get a feeling for things. I like this. I like the idea of knowing that I'm working from one goal to another goal and that new things always pop up.
I would say that it's the diversity of the day I like. Nothing's ever the same.
Q - What do you see as the negative aspects of the job?
A - Sometimes the hours get long. Sometimes the changes get hot and heavy, and I think, "Why couldn't they have told me this last week?" I put in a lot of hours, and sometimes it's frustrating if I'm working with a new boss. There's a lot of turnover in retailing, and that gets frustrating.
Management personnel who can't make up their mind. It affects everyone's psyche indirectly. It destroys your sense of confidence in the person who's directing you if it happens too consistently. It makes an awful lot of work for everybody under that person. There's a lot of politics. There's some at the buyer level; but once you get to divisionals and above, there's a tremendous amount of politics. As much politics as analytical skills.
A lot of times buyers can't really control things to the nth degree. But they are still responsible for it, and they still get the blame. It's a very high pressure job. A buyer's main job is control, but there are a lot of things a buyer can't control, such as if there's going to be a tornado or a snow storm or if you drop $4,000 in a day because they have to close the store. Buyers can't control these things, yet they're responsible. So they have to learn to work their way out of those situations.
Q - What advice would you give a person interested in retailing?
A - It's a very competitive business, you have to get out there and get involved in it and learn what it's like, or you'll be very disappointed.
A lot of it is gut feeling, a lot of it is not facts and figures, it's being able to take a chance based on certain things. But you can learn those certain things. You can't learn that gut feeling.
