10 Tips to Becoming a Good Fashion Merchandiser

Fashion merchandising is about finance as well as clothes.
The world of fashion merchandising is more about hard work than about glamour. The main focus of the job is ensuring that stores deliver the right clothes to customers. Fashion merchandisers are involved in predicting trends and managing stock with the overall goal of getting the most profit for their company. Becoming a good fashion merchandiser encompasses the skills you acquire as you train for the profession.

• Multifaceted Education

Training from a fashion merchandising school can give you the edge over rivals. You should ensure that your education encompasses business learning as well as skills such as computer software use and financial analysis.

• Make a Plan

You’ll need to create a business plan in detail before you look to purchase stock, since you need to evaluate current trends and predict future ones. Once you have a business plan in place, you can make purchases.

• Get Design Experience

You’re not alone in your job: you’ll need to work with designers and sometimes buyers as part of a team. To get experience that may help when working on a fashion line, try accumulating knowledge of fashion design through work placements or simply by talking to designers in your company.
Help Customers Find What They Need

You’ll increase profit if you get customers what they want in a way that’s straightforward for them. One way to implement this is to ensure that a store’s stock contains items that pair well with other garments, so customers are drawn into multiple sales.

• Get Retail Experience

Your job involves delivering plans to the retail environment and liaising with staff in this area, so get some experience of retail at a ground level. This will allow you to make more informed merchandising decisions.
Think Layout

Merchandising can involve creating a store layout plan to allocate stock. Remember in this process that visual appeal and access can influence customers. For example, customers typically search clothes from left to right on a display, according to the Careers in Fashion website.

• Key Skills

Key skills for those entering into the sector include an ability to put in the hours and a willingness to travel all over. A creative sense helps when looking at stock, as does an ability to communicate.

• Tailor to Target Consumer

When creating a merchandising plan, you need to identify who your target customer is before you can get anywhere. The merchandising strategy should then be tailored around that customer. If your merchandising strategy is vague or tries to encompass too much, you won’t have the necessary stock.

• Prepare to Multitask

Good fashion merchandisers need to be ready to quickly shift gear to deal with whatever the job throws at them next. You should prepare to multitask and work across various parts of the company at once.

• Managing Stock

Accumulating too much stock of an item isn’t the end of the world. You can suggest featuring the garment in window displays or in other areas of the retail space to increase customer interest. Stock can also be rotated to other stores if the company owns a chain.