Retail Buying

Project

Act as a buyer for a fictitious retail company, Perry’s Department Store, and create a six-month plan for the Women’s Contemporary Sportswear department including competition and consumer reports, justifications, and vendor planning, all with the COVID-19 Pandemic in mind.

Role

Partner collaboration with Deja Corprew

The Plan

The first task of this project was to do a write up of one of Perry’s competitors in the market and we chose to analyze Saks Fifth Avenue. We broke down the store’s brand strategy, pricing models, inventory, and consumer psyche in comparison to Perry’s to understand what areas to focus on in order to create this plan. All of our decisions were made to adapt to the changes that came with the Coronavirus Pandemic and how that shifted the way the retail industry operates.

After that was all thought out, we were to begin the actual buying plan from August 2020 to January 2021. We decided on planning for a 2.5 sales decrease in anticipation of a decrease of business, this being one of the decisions where the pandemic factored in. With everything in mind, monthly sales, stock/sales ratio, BOM, markdowns, and purchases were made to reach the goal of the decrease. The season’s markup, markdown, and gross margin percentages, in addition to turnover were calculated as well.

Moving on to the justifications for all of the aforementioned, we conducted research to support our plan. We focused on the shifts in consumerism in recent years, the global impact of the virus, and internal strategies that the company can implement.

The final parts of the project included assortment and vendor planning. Going into our assortment plan, we broke down the sales and budgeting for the different classifications offered at Perry’s. We also researched manufacturers to specifically buy outerwear from and wrote justifications about why we chose each of them. Lastly, we put together a mockup of an actual order form to send in.