Day 5: Intimate Apparel Office-Wendi

Today I spent most of my day at the Four Seasons Hotel helping to prepare for the big Conclave event in four weeks. At the Four Season's Hotel we discussed room setup/layout and audio visual tools that were needed. Then I came back and worked on the Hanky Panky board and the Cosabella board. I was putting up the new low rise underwear colors for the seasons. I spent the last part of my day observing the various jobs in the office that I had been doing earlier in the week.

Day 4: Children's Apparel Buying Office-Nancy

The first thing I did when I got to the office was do the 30/30 discount envelopes so they can be mailed out to the vendors. It took me about an hour do that because there were so many of them. Then the visual manager came in to look at the new toys and to talk to us about how we want them displayed at Neiman Marcus. The toys were pretty cool it was like this special Lego light bright thing that is only exclusive to Neiman Marcus and very few high end toy stores. At the meeting Nancy also wanted room to put in limited edition doll houses. Then after the visual manager left we had lunch. After lunch I observed the office people do their daily work and it was interesting to see how tedious their work is because it is very skew intensive. Then their was a associate survey meeting where they talked about what Neiman Marcus employees liked about their job what they didn't and recommendations they had to make it a better working place. My day wrapped up with the Ralph Lauren representatives calling for a follow up meeting.

Day 3: Intimate Apparel Buying Office

Today I was back to the Intimate Apparel buying office. For the first hour I watched Wendi the buyer place her first round of orders for spring 2012. Then I watched her prepare for a Natori meeting. Natori is an Intimate Apparel company and their new representative was coming in to show us the samples and to talk about the new markdowns. After the two hour meeting I went to lunch with my mentor Jodi Kahn and Margaret a senior at Hockaday who was also interning. At lunch we talked about our senior projects and future career plans. When I came back to the office I watched and learned about how to size and allocate sizes in stores. Since their are so many sizes for bra's it is a tedious job to go through each and every size to see what sells the most by looking at previous sales reports. This process took about three hours as we had to do it for 3 companies and over 50 bra styles and underwear. Then I got to listen in on a conference call with the four seasons for conclave. Conclave is where managers get trained and the vendors help sponsor this event. Every year managers from every Neiman Marcus come to Dallas to the four seasons hotel and get trained in almost every department for three days. The highlight of my day was meeting the Natori representative and watch the Wendi and her assistant buyers buy items. It is a very very selective process. The vender brought over 75 pieces and only 10 styles were chosen. To tomorrow I will be back at Children's Apparel buying office.

Day 2: Children's Apparel Buying Office

My day began around 9:00 when I was taken to the Children's Apparel buying office. My mentor for today was Nancy. She buys all the boys clothing, 0-2 year old clothing, gifts for children, strollers, and toys for Neiman Marcus. When I walked in everyone in that buying office was celebrating because they got merchant of the month. Merchant of the month is when a buying office exceeds their goal and has a high increase in sales. The Children's buying office had a huge increase in sale because they released a new Bugaboo stroller that can convert to two strollers and back into one and is extremely light weight but it costs $16000.00. It has been selling extremely well and they were completely sold out within the first week so people are on waiting lists for this limited edition stroller. Nancy treated us to Starbucks and then as soon as we got back I attended a meeting with the assistant buyers on Imports. This meeting was about foreign vs. landed vendors. We talked about the following in the meeting: shipping, customs, method of payment, invoicing, packing, guaranteed landed costs, purchase orders, moving samples into inventory, freight forwarders, custom brokers, air and ocean routes, and returns to foreign vender's. This meeting was quite an educational experience for me because I go to learn all about how foreign sales are done, what can and cannot go through customs and homeland security, and I learned about how merchandise is classified. I think this tool will help me in any sales/retail market I am in and it is also good information to know as a traveler. After the almost two hour meeting we went to lunch. After lunch I attended an EDI meeting with Nancy and her assistant buyers. EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange, it basically is a new sales reporting tool that will allow all vendors and merchants to access and view the same selling information. In the meeting we learned about how to use the new communication system and found out which vendors have access to it and which do not. This pretty much wrapped up my day because it ended at 5:00 and I am super exhausted!

First Day at Neiman Marcus: Intimate Apparel

I got to the Neiman Marcus building at 8:45 and met with the HR Jodi Kahn. She then dropped me to the intimate apparel buying department where I worked with the buyer, Wendi, and her coordinators. As soon as I walked into that office I was told to observe how the Monday Sales Reports were done and then asked to do some. The Monday Reports are the whole weeks sales and they basically tell how much of each item was sold in that particularly department so the buyer of that department can see what they need to do with that style and brand. I learned that for any style as long as they had over a 2% increase in that particular style then the stores did well. While I was doing that I was told that we are supposed to go to the other Neiman Marcus building on Main St. to look at the presentation and go through a virtual tour for the new Neiman Marcus that is going to open in Walnut Creek, California which is a very affluent area. It was pretty interesting to sit in the marketing meeting because they were talking about how they need to outbeat their competition, Nordstroms, in Walnut Creek. They also talked about what kind of customers they want to attract. They are going to try to target 40 year old women with kids who love to buy denim, handbags, shoes, dresses, and clothes for their kids. Their other target is older women who are empty nesters who have nothing but time and like to attend black tie events. Then after that meeting was over we went in another room to go through the virtual tour of Neimans they are opening up and how the furniture/decor/architecture will attract the affluent crowd of Walnut Creek. After the presentations we went back to the offices I kept working on my Monday Reports. After I finished that I sat with with Wendi as she was doing her buying for Wacoal, and Chantelle bras and underwear. She told me that she goes through all the styles they sell for those companies and sees which stores sell the most. Northpark and LA are the two best Neiman locations for intimate apparell so they get a lot of stock. She places the orders based on old numbers. After I watched her do that I went to another coordinator Erin and she taught me the formula they use to get the cost of an item from a vendor and was working on the employ discount sale. The employees get 30/30 a couple times a season which is basically like the vendor gives 30% off and then Neimans gives another 30% off the item so it is basically like 60% off an item which is a really good deal! The las thing I did was listen in on a conference call with Wacoal Intimate Apparel and Wendi was talking to the vendor about which styles she wants to markdown on that company and had a couple of concerns with their products. They got in a little arguement and the conversation seemed tense but they still worked with each other and got it all figured out. After that I left and it was 5:40. I had a really long day and I feel very tired but overall I really enjoyed my day. I will be working with a lady named Nancy tomorrow and she is Wendi's boss.