At the end of the week I assisted Kirsten and Nathan with the etail buy. The nice thing about buying for etail is that all the garments from the line book are bought but some at a higher rate of sale than others. The way in which Animal buy for etail is they review sales figures from the previous year and buy the nearest product for this season by the rate of sale it sold to previously.
Kirsten and Nathan buy from the best selling item the previous year and work their way down from this. As they go down the best sellers they decide a rate of sale or if the item is a close match to the previous seasons they base it on the same rate of sale. The items they decide are not going to sell that well are bought at a flat rate of sale.
In the buy today my part was mainly to observe. I pulled each category of clothing onto a rail as we ran though the items and held them up. At the begging of the day I just held up the items as I learnt how they conducted the buy. After a while though I was able to join in on the thought process and especially when it came to the women's buy I could be a different perspective as I learnt the average female etail customer is a size 12-14 where as in store they are only a 8-10. When reviewing the clothes for the buy I was able to comment on fit and if their typical customer buys in size 12-14 that some styles and fit may not attract this type of customer. My thoughts were taken on board and on one instance Nathan even asked me what I thought and he would go with my decision.

Again this week I agreed with Kirsten to work Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and be able to use Wednesday as a day for uni work.

Today was my last Monday which felt very weird. Much like the last few weeks my Monday task was to compile the top 10 best sellers ready for the trade meeting. After compiling the information for the trade meeting I then moved onto the best sellers for units and etail to have this all completed before the meeting. In the meeting I was pulled up with a small discrepancy between the printed out top 10 best sellers for units and the PDF copy pasted into the pack. Even in my last week I was learning things as I found that after I had saved down the original excel document and closed when I re-opened it to save it as a PDF I must update the document as there are so many formula's I had not realised previously but without updating it the formula's are not at its most recent calculations.

On Tuesday I was in the sample area continuing to make sure the SS12 samples were hung. I wanted to make sure this was completed before I left my work experience so that I could leave it all clear and in order for Kirsten to be able to just go to as she needed.
Kirsten was also kind enough on the Tuesday to allow me to pick out a collections of samples for myself to say thank you for my time working at Animal. This was really kind of her and I managed to get myself some great goodies including a handbag, purse and a large travel holdall. She let me take the products on Tuesday as when I would be in on Thursday and Friday we would be busy with the etail buy.

On Thursday I spent the day working on the samples area. The week before I had spent a few hours packing away the luggage and hanging out the samples for SS12. The rest of the SS12 samples were boxed up so today Kirsten asked I pack away all the AW11 samples and hang out the SS12 samples in book order. This took up my whole day, the items being packed away were to be labelled up for sample sale, the items to be hung took a lot longer as to get them in order of the line book took precision and I wanted to make sure it was in the right order for Kirsten as I know she is very particular about things being in order.

I have had a lot of chances over my time at Animal to review the product in the line book but it was a really good chance to see the bought items for SS12 and see the different materials and prints used. As I will be assisting with the etail buy next week it was good for me to understand what look and styling the design team have gone for with the products for the season leading into AW12.

This week I have agreed with Kirsten that I can have Wednesday and Friday off for uni work.

Today was the same as any Monday. I had my set tasks to complete so I began with the top 10 bestsellers ready for the trade meeting and this particular day Kirsten asked me to paste the PDF into the presentation pack.

On Tuesday I completed the WSSI's and the Go pro comparisons. I then refereed to my faulty e-mails. These e-mails are sent through from the stores with a description of the product and what is faulty. These e-mails are usually responded to by the merchandising team to acknowledge the faulty items and authorise the destruction of the items. When I was last at Animal they had a faulty log that was filled in with all the items that come through on the e-mails. I found this excel document as since there had been redundancies at Animal this document was something the merchandising team were not aware of. As this was something I have been managing in my time at Animal I amended the document to recognise on each page when there was the same product code entered into the faulty log so that it could be recognised the products that were repeatedly being returned faulty. I also discussed with Kirsten an idea to create a page at the end of the document that with formula's could show the repeated faulty items so when it came to a buy or just providing feedback they had the information to review and back it up.

On Monday Kirsten was back so she completed the majority of the pack and I was back to the task of the top 10 best sellers. As I knew I could complete the top 10 best sellers for value and collect the samples quite quickly I was also able to complete the top 10 best sellers for unit and etail before the trade meeting and save these down as PDF's to be sent out to retail.

On the Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I was up with design helping to move the final garments from SS12 samples to archive and then we began to unpack the shipments of AW12 that had come in and hung them in the design sample area.

Thursday was the only other day I was at Animal this week as they were kind enough to give me Friday to spend the day doing some uni work.
Thursday was a day for the smaller jobs to be completed. I completed the WSSI's and the GoPro comparisons  and then I went round to the sample area to pack up the AW11 luggage and bags to make space for the SS12 luggage that had now been delivered.

My week started out in the retail department and on Tuesday I continued with my tasks including top 10 best sellers, WSSI's and go pro comparisons.

The rest of my week was spent helping out with other areas of the business.

On Thurday I was back up helping with product development and finishing moving the SS12 samples up to archive. Whilst doing this there was still a small amount of SS11 samples that needed to be boxed away to be sent to the warehouse for storage so Katie and I worked together to pack away the SS11 stock to make room for the SS12 archiving. I really enjoyed working with Katie as her and I clicked instantly, she only graduated in the summer so she still has a fresh mind.

On Friday I went back up to e-tail in the afternoon after completing a few tasks for Kirsten in the morning. I was requested Sean in Etail to help them out with auditing.My task with etail was to audit products for the website. I was given a list to work from with all the product numbers and my task was to go through the list and make sure the each of the products were published, that the description of the product showed as was clear and spell check each product. I really like working up in the e-tail department, In retail is always very quite and the mood is quite sombre where as marketing and etail work in the same space and there is a really upbeat and fun atmosphere on their floor. Neither departments work any harder but in etail and marketing it just makes working much more enjoyable where I feel retail have lost that. 

Last few days this week before Kirsten is back from holiday. Today I had the responsibility again of compiling the reports. This week I was less daunted by the task of it but I came in early all the same to allow myself the time in case of any problems.

Having the responsibility of compiling the reports has been really insightful and I have enjoyed having something I can take charge of and have the satisfaction of finishing. Understandably they cannot give me too many responsibilities at Animal and although I have found most of the tasks they give me beneficial I have felt much more part of the team at Animal having the responsibility.