Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising

In this episode of the Thrive in Fashion Buying podcast, Elisabeth explains how to think more like a merchandiser, so you can read what is behind a result before you decide where your budget goes.
She covers what to look at when a category is ahead of plan, how to judge whether a selling style deserves more investment, why sales growth can hide an unhealthy business, and why profit has to be built into the buy and not recovered at the end of the season.
If you are in the first few years of your buying career, or you own a category and want your trade meetings to go better, this episode gives you a clear way to connect product, numbers and action.

What you'll learn;
- The questions to ask when you trade above budget
- What to check before you reorder a style that is selling well:
- Why a style that is not selling should not automatically be marked down
- How to work with your merchandiser or planner: what to ask about the measures they watch, their concerns and what they would do differently.
Key terms mentioned
Open to buy (OTB), sell-through, stock cover, margin, stock turn, markdown, full price sell-through, rate of sale, forward cover, fashion and newness, core, lead time, life cycle.

Next step
If you want to build this kind of commercial thinking step by step, using real buying decisions as the working material, take a look at Thrive in Fashion Buying online Course

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Once you have a few years of buying behind you, the hardest part of the job is rarely the product or the numbers. It is getting your range decisions through the business when your merchandiser, supply chain, allocation team and senior managers all have a different view of what the range should be. In this episode, Elisabeth shares how experienced fashion buyers handle push-back, difficult people and tough conversations across the product development process, from concept to the shop floor.
In this episode:
• Why most "difficult" colleagues are working to a different number, and how to turn an intake cut into a conversation about phasing
• The three types of people who are hardest to work with in a buying office, and a different approach for each
• How to stay calm and commercial when your range is criticised in front of senior managers
•  How to build influence with supply chain, allocation, VM and technical teams when you have no direct authority over them
 
To see where your strengths sit as a buyer and which areas are worth working on next, take the free Buyer-Ready Assessment:
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 market goes soft, the instinct is to assume demand has disappeared. It usually hasn't. Your customer is still there, but she's taking longer to decide, buying one item where she used to buy two, and waiting for a reason to commit.
In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale breaks down what actually needs your attention when trade slows down: full price sell-through, forward cover, intake phasing, and the commitments sitting behind your OTB.
She walks through why a decision that looks safe for one buyer, like pulling a delivery forward, can become a real cost once you multiply it across a team, and what separates buyers who hold their credibility in a difficult season from those who don't.
Key Takeaway
In a soft market, the question changes from "will this sell" to "when will it sell, and at what margin". The buyers who navigate this well can account for every unit of their commitments, not just their product choices.
Links & Resources
Online Buying Course: Thrive in Fashion Buying
Connect with Elisabeth:
Instagram: @designdirectivedubai
LinkedIn: Elisabeth Mac Hale
Website: The Design Directive

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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
https://designdirectiveme.com/contact