The traits that merchandise managers and personnel directors emphasize include these:
Enthusiasm. This is a prime requisite. A good fashion buyer feels a real thrill of discovery when he encounters a new and just-right style or fashion look. Some of his delight in the merchandise is bound to rub off on others in the store.
It takes an enthusiastic person to generate the warmth and excitement that put life into fashion merchandising. Retail management seeks that warmth and excitement.
Alertness. Constant fashion change demands constant watchfulness on the part of the buyer. The quick eye discerns early indications of customer boredom with current styles, or early foreshadowing of the emergence of new ones, or the presence of some outside influence or event or happening that is likely to affect customer taste. Early signs are not conclusive, of course; we all know that it takes more than two swallows to make a summer. But an alert fashion buyer, nevertheless, starts checking the moment the very first harbinger of possible change makes an appearance.
Receptivity to new ideas. Fashion merchandising is a field in which the new is the expected. Often, this means that yesterday's way of doing things does not fit today's situation and a new approach must be found. Lovers of firmly fixed routines do not function well in fashion.
Capacity to accept direction. A good fashion buyer needs the capacity to subordinate personal preferences to those of customers, and to subordinate personal readings of the fashion situation to the store's readings.
The color, or silhouette, or detail that you personally fall in love with may not be quite right for the store and its customers. Compromise, even if painful, may be necessary.
Capacity to be an executive. Like any other retail buyer, the fashion buyer is expected to have leadership potential. This means not only to make oneself head of the departmental team, but also to be able to handle the sometimes complex relationships that grow out of the over lapping responsibilities with which a buyer lives. A good boss, a good subordinate, a good colleague, a good trainer of assistants, a good super visor and trainer of salespeople -a good manager!
Creativity. In a sense, this is the ability to harness all the other listed traits. The fashion buyer who can do that will also have what it takes to conceive of or recognize a good new fashion idea, and to win enthusiastic cooperation from everyone in the store or the market whose help is needed to bring the idea to fruition.
Self-Development
Few fashion buyers come to their first assignments with every desirable trait already well developed. Management does not expect perfection, but it does look for fashion buyers who are capable of self development and growth.
Broaden your interests. The more you know about how your store's customers live and about the art, literature, music, drama, and other influences that shape their tastes, the more perceptive you will be about their response to fashion.
Learn about merchandise. Mastery of the hard, technical facts about merchandise is quite as important in fashion buying as a well developed fashion sense.
A strong technical background helps a buyer to decide whether or not merchandise is worth the cost; whether certain extras that can be built into the merchandise really add to its value; whether there are flaws that will interfere with customer satisfaction; whether all labeling laws and requirements have been met.
This is so, even though most women purchase apparel and accessories on the basis of fashion appeal rather than intrinsic value. The right fashion may be something beyond price to the customer, but the store nevertheless has a responsibility to see that the quality of the merchandise is up to its own standards and those of the customer. Otherwise, the customer's pleasure in her purchase may change to resentment against the store that sold her a garment that ripped, faded, or in some other way disappointed her.
You, as a buyer, are your store's prime source of technical information about the merchandise. As science continues to bring new ingredients and new attributes to fashion merchandise, it becomes necessary for you to continue to add to your fund of information.
The customer, your salespeople, the advertising department — all look to you for merchandise information that is accurate, current, and complete. Aside from your own need to inform yourself so that you can make wise buying decisions, you also need to prepare yourself to give the right answers to all the people who depend upon you to supply them.
Improve your communication skills. As a buyer, you have many different audiences to reach: vendors, salespeople, customers, other store executives. You will have occasion to speak privately to individuals, to address large groups, to make recordings, to set your story down on paper. You will need flexibility and skill in communicating, in order to make effective use of whatever medium is appropriate, and to put yourself, as well as your message, across.
Where the Job Leads
As a fashion buyer, if you make good on your first assignment, you have a series of ever-larger opportunities opening before you.
You may be given additional classifications or departments to merchandise. Step by step, you may move up the ladder until you become a merchandise manager, or the manager of a branch store, or the chief executive of the entire operation. Many heads of great stores started their executive careers as fashion buyers.
If inclination directs you that way, you may go into fashion coordination, or personnel work, or promotion. Fashion buying experience is an excellent background for a career in any of these fields.
If you have a strong entrepreneurial urge and adequate personal capital, you may in time set up a fashion shop of your own. Or you may enter fields that involve fashions, but not the running of a department: resident buying office work, publishing, manufacturing, advisory services, for example.
