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Substitutes for Visits at Branches of Fashion Business

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One of the best means for keeping in touch with the branches between visits is the inter-store mail. Use it for such purposes as:

  • reporting on new merchandise, fashion trends, promotions

  • instructing the department manager on merchandise transfers, price changes, special and routine stock counts wanted



  • routing reference material to each branch on merchandise facts and fashion trends

  • reporting back on merchandise requests, want slips, questions from the branch

  • summarizing points brought out at your meetings with the main store sales people, your observations in the market, etc.
Use the telephone when speed is necessary. Avoid using it in discriminately and getting the reputation for always wanting something in a hurry.

Send your assistant, if store policy permits, with explicit instructions as to what you want said and done.

Your assistant may very well be able to hold a training session, present a fashion story, discuss an upcoming promotion, and check the condition of the stock.

Stores usually prefer, however, that assistants do not comment, except to you, on what they observe at the branch. They may appear to exceed their authority if they do more than note and report.

Involving the Branch

Invite the branch department managers, with store permission, to your major sales meetings at the downtown store, and also to view or preview all important fashion shows - customer as well as employee presentations.

Include the branch sales people in major sales meetings by using telephone conference hookups, films, tapes, video, or whatever other facilities your store makes available.

Invite the branch sales people (with store approval, because their time can be costly) to at least one seasonal meeting with sales people from main store and other branches. A major fashion presentation is a good occasion for such a session.

Ask the manufacturers' representatives in whom you have confidence to visit the branches. The reps may not have time to cover all branches on each visit, but if each man goes to just one branch each time he calls on you at the store, every branch will have a few opportunities each season to hear an outside expert.

Getting Information from the Branch

To encourage the flow of information back from the branch — information you need to guide your merchandising — take such steps as these:

1. Let people know you want to hear from them. This goes beyond simply telling department manager and sales people that you want their cooperation.

It includes frequent use, in your announcements and memos, of such expressions as "What do you think?" and "Please tell me what your customers say", and "These looked marvelous on the showroom models. Do they look good on customers who try them on?" "I’d be grateful for your opinion".

2. Encourage creative suggestions by asking such questions as "What could you have sold more of, if you had it?" and "Is there something your customers seem to want that we don't have?"

You can expect some sound suggestions and some strange ones. But if just once in a while you get a hot lead to additional business, these efforts will pay off.

3. Invite post mortems after promotional events, efforts to introduce new looks, changes of departmental layout, new ideas in display, etc. "What did we do right?" and "What shouldn't we do again?" are key questions.

4. Report back promptly on suggestions, answers to your questions; want slips, requests for stock, etc.? If you are supplying the items requested, say so, indicating when they may be expected at the branch.

If you are not going to supply the merchandise, report that fact, too, with the reason, and with an indication of what to tell customers who may inquire.

5. Invite each department manager to review the downtown stock, if store regulations permit. Consider requests for merchandise that you have not assigned to the branch, but that the department manager thinks will be salable there.

If your department managers see your full assortment, and even review with you the lines of visiting manufacturers' representatives, they will be better able to contribute intelligently to the management of your branch departments.

6. Accept follow-up. Expect the branch manager to follow you up in behalf of your department manager if you are slow or negligent about supplying branch merchandise needs.

The branch's job is to sell, and it can't sell from empty racks. You will get complaints if you don't give service.

If you believe the branch is unreasonable, or if you just don't have the help or the Open-to-Buy for what the branch wants, speak to your merchandise manager.

If the branch is right, and you have been slow, make your excuses, explain the cause of delay, and say if and when the goods can be expected.

The branch's follow-up is not an expression of resentment, but an expression of hunger for goods to sell.

7. Organize your requests. When you ask for stock counts and similar information from the branch, try to avoid seeming always to demand instant service. Especially, try to minimize requests for counts on Monday morning, when every other buyer in the store seems also to be demand a count.

You'll get more willing and more intelligent cooperation if you make your requests with some awareness that each branch has many buyers to serve, but only a limited number of sales people for stock work.

8. Probe tactfully, without seeming to criticize, when you are investigating an actual or potential problem. Questions that move head-on into the problem often meet with evasion or silence. Those that simply bring up the subject often elicit more information.

For example, suppose a new look is slow to catch hold in one branch. If you ask why it isn't selling, your people will probably freeze up on you. But if you ask what their customers say about the styles, and how the garments look when tried on, you will probably open up a discussion that gets you to the root of the difficulty.
 
 

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