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Shops, Boutiques, and Boutique Effects

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Whatever the fashion store or department with which you are associated, your merchandising and selling are influenced by the prevalence of special shops and boutiques.

The shop concept arises from the modern customer's insistence on a coordinated, put together look, combined with a reluctance to do excessive shopping for the various components.

The shop, either as a separate enterprise, or as a section of a large department or specialty store, attempts to meet this demand by presenting in one spot all apparel and accessories for a look, or special purpose, or special customer.



Customer? Look? Which?

Typical of the shop idea are the ski, swim, high school, bridal, maternity, college departments each dedicated to a particular customer. Also typical are shops for country casuals, career clothes, avant garde each dedicated to a particular look or group of looks. In each such shop, the customer can make all her purchases at one time, from one salesperson trained to understand her special needs and tastes.

The boutique concept arises from the customer's desire for individuality in this modern, mass produced fashion world. Whether it is an independent enterprise or part of a larger store, each boutique strives to present unique styles, avoiding heavy stocks of any one of them, and dropping quickly those that become widely popular.

Many boutiques are dedicated to frankly experimental styles; others specialize in accepted fashions with individualizing touches.

Boutiques Don't Serve Price

By the very nature of its operation, a boutique cannot enjoy to the full the economies that arise from mass production and mass merchandising. Prices therefore are usually higher than those which prevail in the ordinary large fashion department.

It is not the high prices, however, that qualify a shop for the title of boutique. It is the distinctive, individual styling of its merchandise that justifies the name.

A boutique effect is achieved in a regular department of a large or small store by highlighting a few styles which are newer, more individual, and possibly more experimental than the general run of its stock.

A boutique collection within a regular department offers the customer a chance to assert her individuality even though she patronizes a department dedicated to firmly accepted, widely adopted fashions.

A boutique collection within a regular department is sometimes the means of answering the demand for individuality where there are not enough potential customers for the merchandise to support a full fledged boutique.

Managing a Shop

If you are assigned to operate a special shop within your store, you will find that everything in your shop has to conform to the special demands of its special customer. This applies not only to merchandising, but to decor, atmosphere, and sales staff as well.

In an ordinary department, you subdue your differences from the rest of the store; in a special shop, you accentuate your differences as much as store policy permits.

Scouring the Market

Your market work for a special shop will usually take you into several markets apparel, accessories, even intimate apparel, or, in some instances, cosmetics.

In each market there will probably be outstanding resources that specialize in serving your customers. Your resident buying office will know almost all in the field.

There may be seasons, however, when you know that your customers want certain things that these specialized resources do not produce. You may have to explore other markets to get them. Before doing so, check with your merchandise manager. Not every store approves of having, say, a high school shop buyer in the misses' market, or a maternity buyer in the sportswear market.

Seek suggestions from: other buyers in your store, your resident buyer, friendly buyers for similar shops in other stores, your store's fashion coordinator, business publications, and consumer publications that may serve these specialized customers.

For example, your Teen or Pre-Teen Shop may experience a sudden demand for low priced canvas handbags. The handbag sources you know can't supply you, yet you feel that a new fad is making. Try your store's regular handbag buyer. Knowing the bag market thoroughly, she will probably be able to recommend sources to you: their styles and price lines may not be within the scope of her department.

Staffing Your Department

Customers come to a special shop to be understood, to be waited upon by sales people who can establish rapport with them.

This means that you must be especially careful in selecting and training your sales staff.

Make sure your store's personnel office understands the customer you are trying to serve and the goals of your shop.

Recognize that a woman who can't stand noise will probably loathe (and be loathed by) teenage customers; that one who has no interest at all in sports or travel will probably never sound authoritative about ski and beach clothes.

Try to get sales people who are interested in your customers. Then share with them every bit of information you acquire about how your target customers evaluate fashion merchandise. This is quite as important as knowledge of the merchandise itself.

Another example: If you serve teens or preteens, you and your sales people should pool your observations of the ever changing preferences of your customers in music, television, radio, movies, and sports. Current idols and how they dress have considerable impact upon the tastes of the young.

Still another: Because so many brides want to do the "correct" thing in dress, a Bridal Shop needs all the information it can get about local weddings and those elsewhere involving nationally prominent people. Clip local society pages, news magazines, and major city newspapers to show your sales people how your department's styles relate to what has been worn by notable brides.

Teach sales people to sell the complete look. This may sometimes go beyond simply knowing how to coordinate the apparel and accessories in your own department. If your assortments are narrow in some items, be sure your sales people know where in the store customers can find additional sizes, colors, and price lines. See to it that they also tell you, for fillingin.
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