Work Placement:week two

I was lucky enough to spend some time with the Marketing department during my second week where I learnt about the work that they do there. They have a lot of jobs to do and usually tight deadlines to work to. Their main jobs include organising point of sale for the stores, creating catalogues, advertising, fashion shows, maintaining Beales’ website and store promotions.

One of their more exciting jobs is organising fashion shows and while I was their they actually had a fashion show in Bournemouth square as part of Bournemouth Fashion Weekend. To promote this they created leaflets that had all the details of the garment that were shown to try and generate new sales and customers. They handed out these leaflets during the shows and also had them available in the stores.

This was their most recent show to take place, however they also held a charity fashion show in May this year raising money for the children’s hospice Noami House, and promoting George Davies’ latest women’s wear brand, GIVe, which Beales will be stocking from this October. They had to close down the whole of the forth floor of their Bournemouth store during opening hours to do it, but it was a great success and worth the effort as they raised over £1000 for Noami house!

I really enjoyed my time in the Marketing Department and learnt a lot while I was there. It was a really fast paced environment with a lot going on, and you definitely need the ability to multi task and work to tight deadlines to work in a Marketing Department!

To be a Buyer you have to be a strong, confident person with a strong commercial knowledge and the ability to buy products that will achieve the best possible profits.

It was a great end to the week and I was sad to leave as I had really been made to feel as an important part of the team. I have learnt so much from this experience and will be keeping in contact with Jo in the future. This genuinely has been an amazing opportunity for me and will hopefully help me achieve all that I want to in the future.

After working within a buying department I still feel that design is the path I want to take at the moment but as my dream would be to one day be to run my own business the experience I have gained from my work placement has been vital.

Work Placement: week one

My placement was at Beales head office within their Lingerie Buying department and lasted two weeks. During that time I also spent a day and a half in their Marketing department. I chose this placement because although I have opted to do design in the second year of my course, I want to gain as much knowledge of the Fashion industry as a whole as I possibly can. I feel that having this knowledge will make me more desirable to future employers and also give me more career options.

To get this placement I had to attend an interview with Jo Sotherton, Director of Buying. I prepared for the interview, but I have to be honest and say that in hindsight I think I was a little complacent and not very nervous as I have attended many interview before and assumed it would be the same. How wrong was I!!!

Firstly, I turned up 10 minuets early, which I hoped would give me a few moments to compose myself, however, Jo must be psychic and came down the stairs as I walked through the door. We then went straight into a side room and the interview commenced. Jo started by telling me a little about the company, who I would be working with, what I would be doing etc. It was a lot of information to take in and I was a little in awe and quite like a rabbit in headlights, but somehow managed to answer in sentences when she asked me questions (which is something at least, but don’t ask me what I said!!). I was then shown around the building and the interview ended with Jo asking if I had any questions. I found that as my brain seemed to have gone on holiday, I didn’t have any. Jo told me to arrive at 8.55am on my first day and I left the building feeling a little deflated and hoping that the professionalism that I knew was in there somewhere would return during my placement!

So, what is Beales all about? Well I will start with a bit of history. John Elmes Beale, who was actually the Mayor of Bournemouth from 1902 to 1905, founded Beales in 1881. The company’s flagship store is in Bournemouth and it started to expand in the 1960’s, which has resulted in 11 stores across the country. Today they have stores in Bournemouth, Poole, Southport, Bedford, Bolton, Winchester, Yeovil, Kendal, Tonbridge, Worthing and Horsham. They are not all called Beales, however, with their Southport store called Broadbents & Boothroyds, their Yeovil store called Denners and their Bolton store called Whitakers.

During my first week I learnt all about Suzy’s job as the administrator. Suzy’s main job is to keep control of stock levels within the stores. She showed me how she processes the replenishment orders making sure that the correct amount is ordered and she is not ordering too much or not enough. She also receives customer special orders from stores that have to be ordered separately and in addition to the replenishment orders.

Suzy also creates presentation boards that Jo uses in sales meetings. The boards have to be quite structured and include information about the individual product such as the cost price, retail price and amount sold.

below is the buying cycle Beales works to:

I learnt a lot about how they achieve this during my first week. A strong communication between the different departments is key to accomplishing the best possible outcome.

My jobs during the first week were to do the replenishment orders, special orders, create spread sheets of products sold/not sold during the spring/summer season, create price matrix, check if orders had reached the stores, close completed orders, check cost prices in new catalogues and create new barcodes for new items.