A - When I graduated from school back in 1968, my major was business administration, with some major courses in accounting and marketing and business law. I started doing some interviewing, and I hadn't really considered retailing, but it seemed like an excellent opportunity. I didn't want to go into something and just be sitting around and not have responsibility. Retailing offers immediate responsibility, if you're willing to accept it. It seemed exciting, and it did pan out to be exciting.
I was a textiles and design major, with a minor in business. There were more management opportunities for women, and a lot of excitement that I didn't think a lot of business jobs would give me, with the travel possibilities and the ability to work with fashion merchandise. I think the fashion makes the job a little more exciting than one that's more involved in accounting.
Q - Could you describe the kind of career path one would follow in retailing?
A - Currently in retailing, there are two different schools of thought. The first is that you move at every level between the central and the store lines. You start out as an assistant buyer, which is a central position. You then go to a department managership, which is a store position. Next you go back as a buyer, which is central, then out as a division group manager and assistant store manager, which are line, then back down as a divisional merchandise manager, and then back out to the stores as a store manager. From there you might go back downtown as a general merchandise manager. So every step, you're moving back and forth, you never lose touch with the other side of the organization. There are also stores that have two separate training squads: one is a store-oriented training squad and the other is merchandise-oriented.
Q - Is there any set time you remain in a position?
A - They like to keep you as an assistant buyer for at least a year, mainly to go through two seasons, both a spring and a fall season, because in most departments they're so different. Occasionally it might last a year and a half, or even up to two years, you just don't know.
There's no set length of time that you'll stay a buyer. We have some people who are career buyers and who have been buying for ten or fifteen years. They don't want to go any further, they enjoy what they're doing, they don't want any additional responsibility. I've seen people move up in four or five years. In my case I've been buying about seven years.
You could move to a buying position with a nationwide chain of specialty stores in which your buying responsibilities would be nationwide in scope. A number of my counterparts have done that. You could move to discounters, but once you do that, it is very difficult to get back into the department chain structure. About the only area of retailing that you couldn't move to with a position like a buyer would be to certain very large discounters, because they have such a strong internal structure and development program.
Q - What are the responsibilities of a buyer?
A - I like to think that I'm buying for my own business. The only reason we're in business is to make money. So my responsibility is to make as much money for the store as I possibly can. I'm responsible for markups, markdowns, gross margin dollars, and the bottom line. What I'm supposed to do is take my little corner of the world and run it as my own business, making suggestions to my boss, putting plans and proposals together, and presenting them. What it comes down to is the bottom line; I'm here to make a profit.
Generally the store works on a spring and fall season, six months at a time. You need to plan out stock levels, sales, markdowns, and gross margins, so the store will have some direction, so management can put all the plans together and know where the store is going to come out.
Normally, in hard goods things don't change too much from year to year. What you do is look back on past years' history. Retailers are notorious for doing the same thing year after year after year. If you had a Thanksgiving sale last year and did a lot of business, you can bet you're going to have a Thanksgiving sale this year. You're going to have a Christmas sale. So the events that they've had in the past might not be called the same thing, but they're sure going to try to have a sale event this year to cover the volume of the previous year.
We have very sophisticated computer systems. Every time a sale is run in, it's tabulated. In my particular area I get a report that shows me all the selling by location. I get information every two days about an area like women's ready-to-wear which is very fashion forward. I can find out very quickly what's happening, get back to the market, and reorder.
The first responsibility is determining what the assortments for a particular department should be. That gets me back to the basics of taking paper and pencil, listing everything that I can think of that should be in that department from a consumer's point of view, and developing an assortment plan that would relate to an overall financial plan. Then it becomes the buyer's duty and responsibility to maintain the flow of goods on the basic assortment list.
There are lots of people who feed information into the establishment of an assortment plan. They receive a flow of information from the various department managers, and they also have to have some guidance from the divisional merchandise manager.
I would label the buyers' responsibilities as determining the assortments, maintaining the flow of those assortments, developing a promotional plan by season, and working with the advertising department.
Most buyers buy for one to five departments. They make the plan in terms of the assortment, which is aimed at a particular segment of the population. Are the consumers for a sportswear department, for example, from a middle-income group, or do they have a particular life style? Buyers have to buy to the description that they and everyone else in the store agrees is the mission of the department. They may go to the New York market and choose merchandise that fits into this particular category, making sure that they are working within their financial plan at all times. They're responsible for advertising, for merchandising, and for training the assistant buyers. They're responsible for all the paper work and must see to it that it gets into the files, so that merchandise isn't flowing into the store without a purchase order there to receive it. They're responsible for making sure that the branch stores are stocked to the agreed stock plan, and, if there are some changes to be made, they should recommend those changes.
