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.