Practicum at Pastourelle: Day 8 - Shopping the market, a day with Julia.

We had a bit of a change in pace! Neither Fran nor Susan were present int he office that day so Julia planned for us to get some market time in the stores to teach us a bit on her side of things, Merchandising. We headed out and went to Macys as our first stop, JcPenneys as our second, and finished off with Lord and Taylor, all the stores that Pastourelle items hang in from 3 different tiers of the market; the middle market, the lower end market, and the higher end market. Marmellata is sold in Macys and JcPenneys while Pippa and Julie is sold in Lord and Taylor. 

Not only is Julia a very nice and helpful person, she is very insightful and really knows a lot about the market. She asked us to make observations on the merchandising strengths and weaknesses of the different stores. If I had to rank them...

#1 LORD AND TAYLOR

I would rank Lord and Taylor number one in terms of sales floor neatness and the fair presentation of the different brands. There is a clear quality difference between the items in Lord and Taylor and the other stores clothing. Also of course the price tickets reflect that. 

#2 MACYS

Macy's in the middle, because they seem to oversaturate the sales floor with too many pieces and there is no clear branding for each individual dress company, but there is still an equal representation of the different brands nonetheless.  

#3 JCPENNEYS

By far the worst ranking. All the dresses were littered in with some other random items that didn't compliment them at all. All the holiday dresses were shoved in a random corner in a very displeasing way. I'd say they were really failing in terms of the way things were merchandised. Nothing good about them at all. 

It's apparent that the market level does reflect the quality of the merchandising. However, it varies from store to store I'm sure. 

It was quite a nice time shopping the stores and giving Julia our feedback and observations She seemed pleased with the things we realized and observed. As a designer, and for me personally, it's important to understand every level of the fashion industry.

At around 12pm we returned to the office and reviewed our work with Julia for the first time. She hadn't been there for every step of the design process so she thought she'd get her chance to look at our progress. 

She gave us the merchandising perspective, and told us to take what she said with a grain of salt as she doesn't see things in the same way a designer would. Personally I felt that her insight was even more valuable, because I think in the end, a compromise between the designer and the merchandiser is what makes for a successful product sale. Actually it's an overall team effort (Designer, Merchandiser, Sales).

Julia gave us her input, combing through each of our finished lines, looking at each garment one by one. We both needed some minor changes and alterations to things such as color and silhouette. I changed my color story slightly for my "Clara's Christmas Dream" line for Marmellata, as Julia said the colors were reading very spring like and some of the dresses looked like Easter dresses rather than Christmas dresses - something I was quite afraid of with such a pastel color palette. I tweaked a bit, changing some of the pastel blues to a plum purple, which is still appropriate for the subject and theme (Sugar Plum Faires anyone?) 

As of right now, I think my stronger and more concise collection is the Pippa and Julie "Marionette Masquerade" line, as the colors reflect more of a Christmas and decadent mood and the designs are much more elaborate and fanciful, but it still makes sense as it is the more high end line. 

Ideally, I want to design more from a technical and marketing perspective, so I will be heeding many of Julia's advices. 

Until next time~ 

I hope to have my figures done next weekend and my presentation finalized by the week after that. Time is running short, but I have to pull together and make it work somehow. I'm narrowing down my rendered figures to 3 - 4 per collection as I want to focus more on the technical aspect of the project and also because time is fleeting.

Practicum at Pastourelle: Day 7 - Marketing, Sales, and Merchandising

So after a tumultuous past week, the Hurricane disrupting and upturning everyone, it was finally time to start getting back on track after a lot of confusion and extreme difficulty.

We arrived at the office, that post-election day, a little unsure what to expect. We got there to a mostly quiet office, Susan still in China, and Fran wasn't around yet either. We ran into some confusion because since Susan was away, the relay message that we would be coming in that week got a bit lost in translation. But no matter, it turned out to be a new learning experience instead.

VP of Sales, Glen, spoke with Fran on the phone, and since she was going to be a little late (post election win excitement), he decided he would get a chance to speak with us, as he hadn't had a chance to really give his input on what he does since we've been at the company.

So Glen gave us an overview of what he does at Pastourelle. He used to work for Kahn Lucas, but decided to come to Pastourelle because he was taken by Fran's integrity, design vision, and her skill at running a company. He seems very happy and confident with his career direction and the prosperity the company has had even in these tough economic times.

He stressed to us the importance to staying true to your values ad a company, never skimping on quality for quantity, always trying to find a way to make a garment that is what you want as a designer as well as living up to the expectations of the customer at the same time. It's about the balance between cost effectiveness and putting out a product that you can stick by and are proud of selling. 

Sometimes, he said, you need to make financial sacrifices along the way, losing out a bit here and there, having to settle with a smaller salary at times, but if you are dedicated to the products you put out there, then it's worth it. 

His advice was great, I highly value it and agreed wholeheartedly. It was a nice change to hear a bit of the sales and marketing aspect of the company.

Then Glen gave us a challenge, and it was to take the items from the new Spring 2013 samples and then decide which items would be for Pippa and Julie and which ones would be for Marmellata. Piece by piece we carefully contemplated the qualities that go into placing certain garments into the line for each price point and customer.

We did rather well actually!

We had placed the items we believed were for Pippa and Julie on the hanging wall. Glen came in as we were going through them and he seemed impressed with our choices. Then Fran came in to see what we came up with and in the end we'd only missed 2 items (out of like say 40 pieces on the rack!) I call that smarts! 

We explained why we chose what we chose; Pippa items being more sophisticated, more unique and creative in design, more details, higher quality fabrications and finishing details, as well as a less mainstream color palette consisting of navy, pale peaches, ivories, greens, and intricate printed patterns - not just your basic stripes, dots, and florals, but batiks, geometrics, and watercolors. 

I was happy that we both have soaked in a lot in terms of the company aesthetics and branding the separate lines. I'm glad because I feel like I'm really listening, and that in the real working world I can apply these skills.

So the project continues, theres still quite a bit of work to be done. I'll share everything in class next week. Until then~