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Fashion Merchandising is the set of activities involved in acquiring fashion goods and/or services and making them available at the places, times, and prices and in the quantity that enable a fashion house to reach its goals.
Retail Merchandising is the process of developing, securing, pricing, supporting and communicating the retailer’s merchandise offering.
It means offering the right product at the right time at the right price with the right appeal!!
As a fashion merchandiser, you need to have strong networking skills; networking with both purchase as well sales sources. These skills blended with the art of presentation, make a successful merchandiser.
 Excellent fashion merchandiser or fashion buyer :
As a senior fashion merchandiser or buyer, you'd enjoy the traveling and exclusive communications with top fashion designers, as well mingling with the world's most creative people. Because of the job, you will be directly ordering products from the world's most exclusive apparel manufacturers, including those in France, Italy and China.
You will be hopping from hotel to hotel and living in several different time zones at the same time. Your assistants will be busy carrying product samples for you as you breeze through the revolving doors of fashion houses in New York and Los Angeles.
At the company's headquarter, your employer is probably waiting for your calls anxiously.
That's about what's happening in a successful fashion merchandiser or buyer's life. Now, what is actually fashion merchandising?
In a nutshell, fashion merchandising means :
- Activities involved in the buying and selling of textiles, apparel, and accessories (and other fashion products) at the wholesale and retail levels
- Activities involved in the transfer of products from the hands of the designers and manufacturers to the hands of the consumers
- Activities involved in ensuring the smooth sailing of marketing and selling efforts at wholesale and retail levels
- Activities involved in making sure that the visual appearance of a fashion retailer looks its best in order to attract customers
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Within the realm of "fashion merchandising," there are several job titles popularly used in the retail industry :
- Fashion Merchandiser
- Fashion Marketer
- Fashion Buyer
- Fashion Promotion Specialist
- Visual Merchandiser
- Fashion Sales
- Window Dresser
If you're considering to break into the fashion world as a fashion merchandiser, there are two ways to do so :
- Work for others (retailers, fashion design houses that outsource their manufacturing, wholesalers, boutiques, etc.)
- Work for yourself by establishing yourself an Independent Fashion Buyer that purchases orders on behalf of your clients
- Work for yourself as an Independent Window Dresser that helps clients in decorating their store windows
A buyer has the privilege to decide which products to offer to the customers and where to purchase them. On the other hand, a fashion merchandiser acts as the merchandising team's coach that glues the members together towards a common goal: selling as many products as possible to the customers |
