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.