Fashion requires speed in reporting customer demand; it requires speed in reporting new looks and trends. Keeping communication channels with the branches wide open is a vital element in doing a successful branch merchandising job.
Your Branch Visits
Depending upon the number of branches and their distance from your headquarters, you may be required to visit each branch once a week, once a month, or at other intervals.
Some stores are rigid in scheduling branch visits; others may allow you to go more often to those units that most need help and to visit less frequently the branches where you have strong, experienced department managers in charge.
No matter how frequently or how seldom you visit a branch, however, plan to make each visit productive.
Bring enthusiasm, information, and inspiration to each branch. Carry back a clearer understanding of the branch and its customers. Notify the branch manager and department manager when to expect you, so that they can organize whatever questions they may have for you.
Be especially sure to do this if you are to hold a sales meeting. Branch executives are eager to have such help, and they will probably try to adjust schedules to bring the maximum number of sales people to your meeting.
By giving advance notice, too, you can prevent possible conflict with other buyers. The sales people and department managers who staff your department at a branch usually serve two or three other departments as well, but they can work with only one visiting buyer at a time.
Aims of Branch Visit
The purposes of a branch visit are generally summed up as:
- review the stock
- talk to sales people and managers
- check display and merchandise presentation
- check competition
- make first hand contact with customers
- discuss upcoming promotions
Time at the branch is usually too precious to be wasted on stock counts that can be routinely handled by the branch staff. Neither should it be wasted on arguments and fault-finding. Here you're involved on three problem levels at least: sales people, department/group managers, branch manager.
You invest your time constructively if you use it for:
- discussion of branch problems
- suggesting possible improvements in display, in merchandise emphasis
- discussing future merchandising plans involving the branch
- generating enthusiasm for incoming merchandise
- explaining current fashion looks.
"When buyers visit a branch store, they are expected to be constructive, informative, attentive to problems, and helpful to both the sales people and the department manager. The visit is intended to be inspirational, not hypercritical".
Check List of Things to Do
The same store's check list of what to do on each branch visit includes:
- Departmental appearance: displays, signs, total stock presentation. Buyers are cautioned, however, against making floor moves without permission of the department, group or branch manager. Other departments are involved!
- Advertising and promotional schedule for the next four-week period, reviewed with the department manager. Most store advertising departments send schedules to branches routinely. The buyer double-checks that the program is understood and supplies the how and the why and the excitement behind the planned event.
- Sales by classifications, reviewed and compared with goals. Exchange of ideas on why some classifications are ahead and others are behind planned. This often leads to suggestions for improved performance.
- Slow selling merchandise, considered for possible recall, for better presentation, for possible price change, for indications of change in local demand.
- Stock: excess stocks, for action; treatment of best sellers; possible conflicts with other departments. Check-up on previously suggested action to correct slow, out, or overstock conditions.
- Housekeeping: selling floor, stock area, fitting rooms.
- Competition. The store which compiled this list requires buyers to check at least two stores on each trip. Then check your observations with the branch manager, department and/or group manager. Branch managers keep track of what other stores in the area are promoting.
- Review sales people's performance. If your store sets quotas for each salesperson, review present and future quotas. If there is a problem with an individual salesperson, or with the departmental sales performance as a whole, discuss this with the department manager, the group manager, the branch manager, and the branch training director, if there is one. Together, you may find an answer.
- Dominant fashion selling trends should be reflected in the department's stock and displays. Running your eye over the stock sometimes tells you more clearly than any statistical report whether or not your assortment is conveying the fashion message you want it to.
You can't be everywhere. But if you learn to develop good communication with your branch departments, you can get your messages across just as if you were on the spot every day. And you can get that invaluable feedback about customer demand, stock conditions, promotions worth repeating, and things to do differently next time. With a two-way, friendly exchange of information between you and each branch, you can manage any number of branches successfully.
