Merchandising

Merchandising teams are primarily concerned with the financial and mathematical aspects of their individual departments. Merchandisers predict how much money the department will take in the coming months, what product areas will be driving sales and how many different product styles will be required to support this. Merchandisers must ensure that their departments are meeting targets on sales and profit margins: if margins are below expectations, they will need to investigate and analyse the reasons behind this and alert management to the problem.

Merchandisers also propose promotional activity, work closely with suppliers to reduce commitment on poor selling lines and find the quickest ways of obtaining more stock of the bestsellers. As well as meeting daily business objectives, the merchandiser is responsible for managing and developing their own team. 

Working environment 

Because forecasting and managing stocks and sales plays such a vital role in any retail business’ success, merchandisers need to communicate regularly with other key parties. Merchandisers constantly review sales history and develop a close working partnership with the buying team to identify new trends and areas of opportunity. Together the merchandiser and buyer will build a balanced range in terms of product type, price, colour and any other factors key to their particular product area. Merchandisers monitor performance by visiting stores to understand how the range is viewed by the customers, so they will spend a fair amount of time out of the office. 

Starting out

Some of the larger retailers have specific graduate schemes for merchandising. You can, for example, join a retailer as an allocator. In this role you would be working closely with merchandising and buying teams to provide administrative and analytical support, as well as ensuring the accurate and effective distribution of stock to store.

Skills required

First and foremost you’ll need to have a passion for retail. If you are business minded and logical, and have the ability to analyse numerical data and quickly identify issues and recommend solutions, then you will certainly enjoy the problem-solving focus that merchandising offers! You’ll also need to be ambitious, outgoing and dedicated, and ideally have an understanding of retail from working at store level.

Paul Penberthy is a merchandiser at River Island. He has an MSc in mathematics from Queen Mary, University of London.