So my first day went a little like this.....

Things have changed a bit since I was last at Animal....unfortunately earlier this year there were company redundancies being made and Abi the buyer I reported to the last time I was here was one of the members of staff to be made redundant. Whilst on placement I will be reporting to Kirsten Porter the Buyer/Merchandiser, I have worked with her previously when I was at Animal but I never really had much to do with her and we have never really chatted all that much so I was nervous to see how the relationship between us will be. I know that I am quite a vivacious chatty person however I am also hard-working and I hope that I can still bring a sense of myself to the job with professionalism.

My first role of the day was to download the Retail Top 10 from the previous week and format the information, change the layout and include the missing pictures so this could be fed to the business. I then had to go to the samples area and on a rail display the overall top 10, men's top 10 and women's top 10. The information on the top 10 is included in a pack that is reviewed at the trade meeting every monday between the retail staff, the sales manager and the area manager. At this meeting we also review the product itself that has made it into the top 10 to help understand the customers better and for the area manager to understand what stock may need to be brought forward in store to help sales on other items.

It is no shock to me that Animal is not doing as well as previous years with the redundancies they have made in the last year. In the trade meeting today week 39 was revieved and they were -37% LFLon last years sales. It was also mentioned in the meeting that they are down -25% on the year and that the forcast is that this will continue for the last quarter.