Life as an Assistant Fashion Buyer!
My internship as an assistant buyer has been a great learning experience! The fashion department at RTR is composed by the buying, planning and merchandising teams. All three work very close together to determine what products to buy, the amount of inventory to buy, what to merchandise, etc.
As a buying intern I have participated in multiple market outings, where I accompany my supervisors to vendor showrooms to choose items for following seasons. In June, for example, we were buying accessories and clothing for the holiday season. A lot of sparkle for a great end of the year!
Some of my other duties include:
- Creating “buy books” where all the new product has to be accounted for.
- Creating weekly selling reports to send to our vendors so we see how their products are performing. This is very helpful for us so we can identify the preferences of our customer for next seasons, and it is also helpful for the vendors for them to evaluate which of their products has a greater success rate.
- Trying on clothes and accessories in what we call “Fit Sessions” in order to write reviews for that product in the RTR website. Reviews are essential for RTR’s business since it is where the customers are able to understand the fit of a style as worn by other women. Thus, the more reviews a certain product has the better as it can drive more rentals towards it.
Shopping for a living is the dream yet it is definitely not as easy as it seems. Some important lessons I have learned that are essential for a buyer include knowing your customer extremely well and being able to identify trends from fads. A business like ours depends entirely on the pool of products that we offer. The most important thing is to spend wisely. We have to make sure we have an array of styles that fits all of our customers; keeping in mind that women have different tastes and body shapes, for instance. We also have to make sure to obtain the most accurate volume of products as needed. It is a constant risk game that I am loving to be part of!
Come check out RTR’s amazing pool of products here!
