Clothing Buyer Mysterious Career "Omnipotent" Flying Trapeze

Fashion buyer is a mysterious occupation in the fashion circle. It seems to sit on the T stage to look at the show. The work of choosing money is actually hiding a lot of data analysis and trend judgement. It's like an inventory manager who co ordinate the entry and exit of each item.

Flying trapeze

A cup of coffee stays all day.

I thought a Italy top. Luxury brand The fashionable buyer should appear in front of the reporters with a stylish appearance. However, if Jason enters the coffee shop, it is rational and rigorous to let people get caught off guard.

"In fact, the most important thing is to buy data, buyers always pay attention to budget and inventory, not shopping simply." As soon as Jason is seated, the essence is revealed.

For five years, Jason has been used to becoming a hotel. He said frankly that travel does stay in five star hotels and business class, but "behind the scenes is tears." He has to fly dozens of domestic cities every month to train Chen Li Shi and sales staff for his knowledge of goods. Going abroad to buy goods is also "very beautiful", whether in Milan or Paris, did not wait for the time difference, but also work without stopping, until second days morning 5 o'clock.

Frequent travel has become a common practice for buyers because they are going to research and see shows around the world. "Often busy to have no time to eat, a cup of coffee is the source of my energy all day." Jason said helplessly. Even when working in domestic brands, there are four or five times a month, and the frequency of frequent trips without limit is normal.

A set of processes is used to describe the work of Jason, that is, to study all kinds of data, and to establish a purchasing plan combined with market research, to fly 3-4 times a year to the headquarters of Milan, France, to distribute goods according to the domestic market, to fly to different cities for sales training, to explain the selling points and fashion ideas of each batch of goods, and to track the sales situation and inventory. Then loop the process. Travel, overtime and data analysis is a required course for buyers.

Buyers and buyers of integrated brand are different. Like I.T and Lane Crawford, fashion buyers will pay more attention to different niche brands and personalized trends, and buy the costumes with the most design sense and fashion. Liang Guohua is now a S&S buyer of the Fifth Avenue luxury network's women's clothing brand, such as his integrated brand such as S&S. The buyer's job is to collect the candidate designer brand in line with the S&S New York style positioning, and negotiate with it to buy the specific style copyright, which is produced and pushed to the market by S&S. "Professional fashion buyers focus on the future and trend, make full use of data and accurately judge." Liang Guohua said.

Buyer Decision

Determine the fate of the company's performance

Liang Guohua often studies sales data in his office and forgets his time. The rise is at 10 in the evening. Looking at the lights that have already been extinguished by other departments, he is often touched by himself. Their work is directly related to the lifeline of the fashion retailing industry - inventory and sales. It can be said that the decision of a buyer affects the performance and fate of a company.

"We stand between designers and consumers to balance the design and reality of the target market. We must read the consumer, or even learn a little psychology. Otherwise, making mistakes, it means that the company can't sell goods, and money has fallen into the bottomless pit." Jason is serious.

In foreign countries, statistics is one of the most important courses for buyers. Liang Guohua has displayed various data analysis forms commonly used, which are various and complex. A professional fashion buyer needs to do a lot of preparatory work before purchasing: past sales data analysis, sales cycle analysis, international fashion trend prediction, quarterly distribution of goods according to season, expected sales index analysis, OTB distribution analysis (cost budget), supplemented by market survey, shopping district shopping characteristics and consumer group analysis, and finally establish sales target, initial purchase plan, namely, the proportion of styles, quantity, color, type and clothing, skirts, trousers, shoes, bags, accessories and so on.

It is understood that modern Fashion buyer system It comes from the European high-end department store buying system. In order to satisfy the consumers' demand for fashionable taste, a special person, namely a buyer, collects all kinds of fashion brand goods into the mall and divides them into categories and consumer groups to match the sales planning and profit targets of department stores. For example, the well-known consumers of old Buddha's department store and so on. Today, the American and British retail industry associations summarize the work of "buying data, analyzing data, supervising sales and monitoring inventory logistics".

Insiders told the Beijing Commercial Daily reporter, in the domestic garment industry, different sizes and types of clothing The salary level of the buyer is far from the company. Traditional or small and medium-sized clothing companies, there is no buyer level classification, and even the purchasing department has only one person, the buyer salary is around 4000-5000 yuan. The salaries of large clothing companies and overseas luxury brand buyers vary from grade to level, and they are even the search targets of headhunting companies at around 8000-2 yuan.

　 Tremble with fear in one's Boots

China World Trade Center subway crouch

"Every time you make a market move, it's really tangled. Can you imagine a buyer running to the China World Trade Center subway station for a long time, just to observe the target consumers?" Liang Guohua said.

In addition, some long-term market research buyers summed up their own skills of secret visits. The buyer of a traditional clothing company told the Beijing Commercial Daily reporter that she was based on the "scraper board", providing the designer with the details of the best selling clothing styles at the moment.

"Mobile phone screensaver is all black, so candid camera is not easy to find. Pretend to be a customer, try clothes in the fitting room, and photograph all the details of the product. It sounds a bit like a secret agent. Actually, it's almost the same. It's a terrifying agent. " She said that every time she had to work hard on her dress, she could not be too fashionable to be noticed, nor too ordinary to be ignored directly. Moreover, the brands of research could not afford to spend, so it was the best working condition to pretend to be able to afford it.

An unnamed buyer of a traditional clothing company in Guangdong told the Beijing Commercial Daily reporter that its work was more specific. She called her role more like a "scraper", always paying attention to fashion websites such as POP and so on. She followed up the latest big design and big show sites in the world, quickly copied the popular styles and ordered them to produce, and then put them into various sales channels to make profits. "This practice is very common in the southern clothing market, especially in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Clothing companies have no intention to establish their own brands, that is, the pursuit of "profit". She said.

Uneven, some good and some bad

Buyers also have to "bargain".

At present, domestic professional buyers are mainly concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai. The traditional formal buying system abroad has spread to China, and "imported products" have diversified forms of occupation in various areas.

The Beijing Commercial Daily reporter has visited many websites of domestic clothing companies. Their job content and qualification requirements are different. Some small and medium-sized enterprises even regard "bargain price" as a qualification. If its main Only and Vero Moda fashion fashion (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., its buyer's main job is to develop and maintain suppliers and follow up the production schedule of large goods.

Ding Yiou, a clothing buyer, told the Beijing Commercial Daily reporter that the so-called "supplier" refers to the OEM company. In the short run, designers have devised hundreds of thousands of new models, which are almost impossible. Therefore, fast fashion brands in China are responsible for collecting similar products from other clothing companies or factories. The selected company or factory is a supplier. Slightly alter the original design of the supplier, directly attach the brand LOGO, and then return the brand to the market directly. This is the OEM sale. And those looking for OEM companies, bargain buying and selling, and changing the board are the so-called buyers of fast fashion brands. In addition, the buyers of some garment companies are actually the roles of the operator or the manager of goods. They mainly allocate goods among different regions or stores, take charge of merchandising, and track the processing of suppliers. And some e-commerce platform buyers need to track the background sales data in real time, replenish the goods in seconds.

Yang Dayun, President of UTA, China's Fashion Management Group, believes that the complexity of the domestic buyer's industry is due to the particularity of the domestic retail formats and will continue to be diversified in the future. Domestic retail market electricity providers are highly developed, and the "two landlords" old department stores are moving towards the buying system transformation, the fast fashion pursuit of the ultimate new speed, the factory fake big market is huge, which is the main reason why the domestic fashion buyer industry presents such strange situation.

Reporter's notes

A good buyer is making a compromise with the market.

Before completing the interview, he had fantasized that the interviewee would contact the international top trend every day and use the impeccable fashion quality to control the market. However, a good buyer often comes to compromise with the market.

This feeling burst out when the interviewees disclosed their buying experiences. Jason has bought a long suit which is totally sold in China, and has been backlog into stock. Liang Guohua insists that it will become a big print dress for exploding money, then sell one piece back. Ding Yi Europe explains that the fast fashion buyer is actually "bargaining with a continuous supply supplier in a big house". Everything that is bright is turned into reality, but it is turned into reality.

"I will not blame my customers for not enjoying those beautiful concepts, and to guide them as little as possible under the premise of not losing money, which is the responsibility of the Chinese fashion industry." Jason said he hopes to tell readers through this interview that beauty is important. Whenever he saw a girl wearing an inappropriate dress on the subway, matching the pair of round slippers that made them out of proportion, he felt sad that the boy was wearing his hair in the hair and covered his ears. He feels that a person's image is his first card. You don't respect yourself and how the world respects you.