Merchandising: Buying What The Public Wants

Today was my second day in the Merchandising Department. For this week, I am working with the buyer in charge of interiors, holiday merchandise, and pottery. Yesterday, I went over a few reports that showed how many items we have at each store and total and how much the inventory is worth. My buyer explained that his job required looking at many reports. The inventory going on this week will help true up the numbers for their reports. I also put together replenish orders for the interior plants. We look at the amount of each plant at the stores to see if we need to order more in or put in a Special Order (when a customer specifically asks the manager to put an order in). We also look at the projections for product for the previous and current week. We make adjustments based on what we sold the previous week and what other circumstances could affect sales. We try to make sure we have at least 3 weeks of product on hand each week. As we ordered, we had to keep in mind the actual size of the store. If a store is small, you can't just order product because they are running low. You try to get them enough product, but ordering too much will cause problems at the store.  After, I completed putting together the orders, I emailed them to each of the vendors. The stores should see the product I ordered next week. Another important aspect of being a buyer, is being willing to try new product because doing the same thing will get stale and boring after a while. My buyer's office is full of samples from vendors. Sometimes, you are successful when you try new things, like with the Kimberly Queen Ferns; other times you are not as successful as you hoped, like with the Rabbit Foot Ferns. Some products do better in our Houston market (the Cornelius Nurseries). Houston sells interior plants and home decor much better than the DFW stores.

Today, I worked on projections for next year's Indoor Fern project. Projections are based on previous year's sales data. The buyers then figure how they hope to improve the previous year's data. These projections are important for the company, but they are also important to our vendors. We send them our projections, so our growers can make sure they can produce it all for us. This is called "booking". I also worked on the inventory for the South Arlington store. Calloway's pays a company to come inventory our products. Everything is counted. I helped as an auditor where I would pick random sections to check the counts made by the counters. It is EXTREMELY important that we get the counts as accurate as possible. This will directly affect the profit of the company. It will also help the buyers know that the inventory numbers in the system are correct, so they can order the appropriate amount of product.

The merchandising department is very interesting, and I am learning a lot. I am also putting my Microsoft Excel skills to the test with all of the data I am organizing and analyzing. This is going to be a fun week.