Fashion Merchandising Explained. Different Careers, Roles and Business Mind Helps

There are different fields in fashion that one can explore. Apart from designing, there is a business part of the field too. This part looks at garment selection, cost of it, planning, storing it, how to present it in the store and sold to a customer. A different field from designing. This is merchandising.  This field bridges the gap between commercial and fashion. It is the field that sells the fashion that is new, trendy, may be the one that is in demand.  We get to understand this with Riya Kumari’s journey who got placed at Reliance Brands Limited.

The two fields might look similar but they are different from each other. The tasks of fashion designer are related to creating the design on the garment, it is concept based, the silhouette, the fabric, the collection is the part. Where as the fashion merchandiser looks at the garment from selling point of view. It is viewed as the product. Hence, the tasks are planning, deciding quantity, costing, and seeing how it is bought, stocked, displayed and how it will perform in the retail. The two fields work closely together. Design has creativity, while merchandising is business.

They are different jobs for different temperaments, and confusing them leads students into the wrong course.

A good fashion merchandising programme, such as the M.Des in Fashion Merchandising, is deliberately broad, because the field itself spans the whole retail ecosystem. The subjects tend to cluster around the commercial and operational side of fashion:

• Merchandising planning and costing, including merchandising calendars and the economics of a product range.
• Retail and visual merchandising, how products are presented in-store to drive sales, often studied through actual store visits.
• Buying, inventory and supply chain, deciding what to stock and managing it through the store.
• Export documentation and compliance, the operational and regulatory side of moving product.
• Quality assurance and product understanding, ensuring what reaches the customer meets standard.
• Design thinking and garment development, enough hands-on exposure to understand the product being merchandised.

The point of this breadth is that a merchandiser has to understand both the product and the business around it. A student who has built a merchandising kit, run a visual-merchandising study in a real store, and developed a garment from their own collection understands the field from several angles, not just one.

There are wide offerings that this field has, here are some of them listed below:

1. Fashion Merchandiser: They can be assistant merchandisers too, who plan, decide the cost, coordinate with the designers, buyers and retailers.
2. Visual merchandiser: They take care of how the product shall be displayed in the store.
3. Retailers: Their work is related to stores, including fashion consultancy. They are focused on what customers want, it is focused on customers. They combine the knowledge of product and inventory awareness along with sales.
4. Buyers: The buyers or buying assistant decide on what a retailer shall stock, shall sell, check the requirement.
5. Export and sourcing: This role is related to exports, documentation, compliance and supplier coordination.
6. Quality check: Quality check is required for maintaining the product standard. It is related to quality assurance and whether the quality is maintained or not. Retail supply chain being one of the parts.

One Parul University M.Des Fashion Merchandising graduate, Riya Kumari, was placed at Reliance Brands Limited as a Fashion Consultant, a customer-facing retail role managing in-store inventory, consulting customers and handling sales. It is a common entry point, and it illustrates the breadth: a merchandising education can lead onto the retail floor, into a buying office or into an export operation depending on where a graduate’s strengths lie.

TOne of the most valuable things about knowing fashion merchandising is that it caters to a commercial rather than a creative mind. Fashion merchandising is essentially about the business of fashion: costing, planning, inventory, and retail performance, and therefore having a background in business or commerce stream is actually an advantage. Students who are more inclined towards commerce or who do not have a creative flair may want to look at a career in merchandising as an alternative way of using their skills. This is why students switching from commerce to merchandising are the most common – little is wasted since they already have an understanding of the business aspect of the job

Fashion has different fields. The part that is not only focused on creativity but has commerical part too. The fashion merchandising is one of the fashion fields tha that inclines towards business. It is related to buying, planning, selling part of products made. It is for someone who like to stay at the organisational side. Someone who understands the customers and the product. Person who wishes to have a career with more than one domain. The usual route is a focused programme, a diploma, or a Master’s. The programme that Parul University offers is M.Des in Fashion Merchandising.

Also Read: From Commerce to Reliance Brands: Riya Kumari’s Switch Into Fashion Merchandising at Parul University