Branch stores (or outlying units, or suburban stores, or affiliate or sister stores, or whatever other descriptive term is used in your organization) have demonstrated their enormous potential for volume and profit. They have also demonstrated that they make your job as fashion buyer more challenging and more rewarding than it would otherwise be.
Merchandising a Branch
Fashion demand in each branch is subtly different from that in every other branch of the same store, and different from the down town unit as well.
Watch each branch for variations from others in:
- emphasis upon individual classifications and sub-classifications
- preferences in color, size mix, price lines
- differences in income level
- peaks and valleys in shopping-with peaks usually closer to the time of need than in downtown stores, and with Saturday traffic usually heavier than downtown
- local conditions which affect the timing of promotions - the need to participate in community or shopping center retail events, for example
- local competition.
You may find that one community has major social occasions earlier or later in the season than another, or that entertaining in the home is more casual in one area than in another.
Or you may find that fierce competition in a given price or classification cuts drastically into your volume prospects at one branch, whereas another branch has the field to itself in the same price and classification.
Sources of Information
A careful watch over sales and stock figures at each location will pinpoint how each unit compares with the others in demand.
Even more helpful will be checking with branch personnel. Since these people usually live in the community served by the branch, they can tell you not only how a look or style number was received, but why it was welcomed or rejected.
If you are buying for a new branch, your original directives from your management are probably based on preliminary studies and analyses of the community. Such information gives you a starting point. Once the doors have been opened, however, your day-to-day watch helps you adjust to actuality.
Stocking the Branch
No matter how few or how small the branches for which you buy, plan and order for each one separately. Work in units to make sure you provide balanced coverage of sizes, colors, and prices. Plan separately even if your store does not maintain separate inventory figures for each location. You need separate planning and ordering to make sure that each branch has:
- sufficient stock
- stock adjusted to local customer demand
- balanced sizes, colors, prices.
Before you sign an order, recheck each branch's purchases for balance and completeness, as well as quantity and amount.
Your store may wish to have vendors pack each branch's goods separately, even though the entire shipment comes to the main store for marking and distribution. This procedure facilitates identification and transfer of each branch's merchandise, whether or not you are available to supervise the distribution when the goods come in.
Look for special opportunities at individual branches for merchandise not needed in other branches or downtown. For example: white dresses for the winter concerts of a local singing society; nurses' white stockings for the women employed at a nearby state hospital; black hosiery and cotton underwear for a local convent.
Analyze Sales and Stocks
Analyze each branch's sales and stock figures.
If your store has several branches, you probably receive electronically processed reports that break down each unit's figures in all important respects.
If your store has only one or two branches, for which separate inventory figures are not maintained, you may have to set up records of your own.
You can't do your best work in the dark.
In seeking guides to what sells and what doesn't at each location, work with looks, ideas, colors, price lines - not style numbers alone. Occasionally, an individual number may be spectacularly good.
More often, though, it is a case of tweeds, or brights, or full skirts, or curves, or elegance, as the case may be, rather than a specific style number.
If you watch your branch assortments in terms of broad elements of fashion, rather than style numbers alone, you can achieve better balance within each one's stock.
Check non-starters promptly. Branch stocks are too small to accommodate dead wood. When you identify a poor seller, ask yourself:
- if you convincingly conveyed the fashion and merchandise story to the branch sales people
- if the merchandise presentation and departmental display are adequate
- if you mentioned the branch in your ads for the goods
- if sizes, colors, and prices are suited to the branch
- if there is formidable local competition that makes the item an unwise choice for the branch.
Check for excitement. Make sure each branch's assortment contains some of the ideas and numbers you will promote. Branches are hungry for traffic, and for fashions they have that will be advertised.
