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.