Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising

What do you do when your sales are on plan but your margin has dropped. In this episode Elisabeth explains why that happens, what it tells you about the quality of your sales rather than the volume, and the questions to ask in your Monday trade meeting to find the cause before it grows into a bigger and costly problem,
IN THIS EPISODE
·  Why margin is driven by the value and mix of what you sell, not by the number of units that leave the shop floor
· The five most common causes of a margin drop, from a markdown rate above plan to movement in your landed cost
·  How a shift in product mix inside a single category can cost you several points of margin while sales still look healthy
·  The six diagnostic questions and what each one tells you about where to act

GO DEEPER
If you want to understand how margin is calculated, how to phase your product, and what weekly actions to take when your figures start to move, that is the commercial framework the Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising course was built to teach:
https://designdirectiveme.com/online-fashion-buying-course
If you would like to develop your fashion buying knowledge from concept to customer, explore the Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising course at designdirectiveme.com

When a range underperforms, the initial assumption is almost always that the product was wrong. It sometimes is. In this episode, Elisabeth goes through the small number of reasons ranges that contribute to a poor trading range, what a proper category analysis includes compared to the blame conversation that some buying offices run instead.
In this episode:
·  Diagnose an underperforming range against the real causes:
·   Run a category analysis that produces information rather than defensiveness, mid-season as well as end of season
·   Review the option-level data, including the sell-through, markdown and margin analysis most buyers don't pull.
·   Read the same sell-through figure two ways, and understand why 68 per cent can be either a success or a significant failure
The full commercial framework behind this kind of diagnosis, from intake phasing through to markdown strategy, is here:
If you would like to develop your fashion buying knowledge from concept to customer,
explore the Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising course at designdirectiveme.com

COURSE DETAILS
https://designdirectiveme.com/online-fashion-buying-course

Have a Question - Ask Elisabeth
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There are lots of questions in buying that are left unanswered. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale answers some of those directly: these are questions that come up repeatedly from buyers at different stages of their careers, and that the person asking rarely wants to raise out loud.
In this episode:
- How to know if your OTB figure is right
- What to do when a supplier keeps pushing back the delivery date
- Do you have to choose between product instinct and commercial data
- Why the feeling that everyone else in the room knows something you don't is not unusual
- When the right time to put yourself forward for more responsibility

To build the commercial foundations that underpin all of these questions, explore the Buyer's Toolkit Mini Course:

To go deeper and develop your fashion buying career sills from concept to customer, explore the Thrive in Fashion Buying course

Website and Podcast Notes DESIGN DIRECTIVE

Email your questions Hello@thriveinfashion.com

The relationship between buying and merchandising influences how a season performs.. 
It is not always obvious but when it works well it shows in the way decisions are made, how the two roles challenge each other and how smoothly the work moves from one to the other. When it struggles, the commercial impact can appear long before the real problem is clear.
In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale explores what the best buyer-merchandiser partnerships have in common and what tends to gat in the way when they don't work well.
- Why financial fluency is the key to a strong buying-merchandising relationship
- The practical importance of clear decision ownership
- The difference between working in silos and solving the same commercial problem together
 
If you would like to develop your fashion buying knowledge from concept to customer, and to understand more about the role and responsibilities of Buyers and Merchandisers, explore the Thrive in Fashion Buying online course:
https://designdirectiveme.com/online-fashion-buying-course
Find more info on the Website
https://www.designdirectiveme.com

Professional development in Fashion Buying is largely self-directed. Most organisations do not have a structured approach to developing their buyers, and the ones who wait for a plan from above tend to wait a long time.
In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale shares some examples s she used throughout her career to manage her own professional development, and the signals she looks for when she sees buyers doing the same.
 
In this episode:
- Why tracking your decisions and their outcomes is one of the most effective development tools available
- How to seek out exposure in buying offices
- Identifying the gap between where you are and where you want to be, and targeting it deliberately
- Four signs that a buyer is taking ownership of their own development
 
Take the FREE “Are You Buyer-Ready?” Quiz to understand your current strengths and development gaps and where to focus next:
https://learn.designdirectiveme.com/fashion-buyer-ready-quiz
 
If you would like to develop your fashion buying knowledge and skill further from concept to customer, explore the Thrive in Fashion Buying course Here is the link directly:
https://designdirectiveme.com/online-fashion-buying-course
 
Check out the website for more information and blog articles.
https://designdirectiveme.com