With a good assistant, moreover, you are better able to handle those phases of your work that take you outside the store. You can do your market work and branch visits more easily if you are secure in the knowledge that a capable person is taking care of things at home base and can cope with emergencies during your absence.
The Assistant as Executive
Store managements usually make a point of distinguishing between an assistant to the buyer and an assistant buyer. An assistant buyer is an executive, even though of junior status, who accepts certain designated responsibilities for the management of a department, and who performs other responsibilities when assigned by and under direct supervision of the buyer.
An assistant buyer is generally looked upon as a potential future buyer, a buyer-in-training.
If you are asked to nominate an assistant for your department, or to pass upon one referred to you by your store's personnel office, give first consideration to executive potential.
Almost any pleasant, willing person can be an assistant to a buyer to run errands and do clerical chores. But to be an assistant buyer, the candidate should have executive ability - the ability to assume responsibility, to supervise others, and to exercise judgment within the frame work of delegated authority.
In selecting your assistant buyer, try to choose someone whose traits balance your own, if at all possible. It is easier to divide up the work, and to maintain a relationship of mutual respect, if each of you brings a slightly different package of skills to the job. To the extent that your assistant has strengths or talents with which you are less well endowed, plan to use those talents. You will make a stronger team.
The Assistant as Department Manager
In many organizations, the assistant buyer serves as department manager at the main store - overseeing stock, coaching and supervising sales people, following through on advertising and display. In this activity, she is directly responsible to the buyer.
Branch stores, however, usually have a department manager or other executive with similar title who covers several departments and works with several buyers.
Such a person is not an assistant buyer. She is directly responsible to the manager of the branch, rather than to any of the individual buyers with whom he works.
As a buyer, you can assign duties with respect to department management to your assistant, as necessity dictates. In dealing with branch department managers, however, you have to recognize that your authority is limited.
You will have many occasions on which to request and receive cooperation from branch department managers, but you are probably not permitted to assign duties, specify priorities, or otherwise organize the department manager's time. That is for the group manager or branch manager to do.
If your store is one that divorces buying almost completely from the selling floor, you will probably have a department manager for the main store. Such a person usually concentrates his work only in one department, yet he may not be your assistant in the sense that you are permitted to divert him from his floor responsibilities to help with other aspects of your work.
Many stores spell out, in their job descriptions, where a buyer's authority begins and ends with respect to department managers; others do not. If you are not sure about where you may require action and where you must request it, ask your merchandise manager.
Duties You Can Assign
To encourage its fashion buyers to make full and intelligent use of assistant buyers, one multi-unit specialty store drew up a list of various duties that should be delegated to the assistant, subject to review by the buyer. The following check-list is adapted from that store's list:
- Daily ticket sort for review of best sellers, with action to replenish branch stocks as needed
- Dollar sales records, by stores, from ticket stubs or audited sales slips
- Monthly sales and stock records by stores
- Summary of unit sales by price point by month
- Recaps of items to be reviewed by buyer for possible reorder
- Daily report of slow as well as fast sellers, from ticket sort and unit control
- Master list of styles in stock
- Markdown records and reports
- Activity record of special price lines -those other than normal in the department
- Counts, reports, reorders, on staple stocks
- On order file - canceling odds and ends monthly; making other cancelations as needed
- Monthly review of stocks by stores; balancing overstocks and under stocks
- Periodic balancing of entire inventory
- Supervision of charge backs and returns to vendors
- Weekly review and disposition of non-salable merchandise at each store.
The store mentioned above also detailed various buyer responsibilities that can be shared with the assistant, or delegated in whole or in part:
- Review lines (with buyer) in store and showrooms
- Attend sales promotion meetings (with buyer)
- Participate at times in selection of merchandise
- Write up advertising requests; follow through, even to working with resource, to make sure of delivery; check proof of advertisement for accuracy
- Contact resources as necessary to follow up on orders placed
- Distribute newly received merchandise among branch stores
- Service requests of branch stores for merchandise, special needs, including customer requests for belts, buttons, etc.
- Communicate with branch stores on advertised merchandise coverage, special orders, etc.
Buyers are instructed also to review the results of their market trips with assistants so that they have current knowledge of fashion trends, planned advertising, special events, and general information which will benefit both her and the store personnel. Assistant buyer must have some general, if not specific, knowledge about every item on order.
