Summer in the City

Today was pretty slow at the office. I came in at 9:30 and sat around for about an hour before they passed me off to Denise Jones in production. There I helped her pull Men's Holiday 2006 Pre-Classifaction samples to send downstairs to get classified. I felt like I was on a scavenger hunt because the samples were in 5 different places on our floor. After that Aubrey gave me a copy of the men's fall 2007 merchandise plan to make copies of and staple together for a meeting. After I finished that it was time for lunch.

After lunch I got to sit in on a couple of meetings which was really cool. First was the men's fall 2007 merchandise plan meeting with the design team. Aubrey explained to me later that the plan provides an outline for the designers of the types of pieces we need. For example, for the first delivery of merchandise we need four new long sleeve woven shirts, two priced retail at $59.50 and two priced retail at $69.50. The designers take this plan and in about a month they will present to us a line for the season. This is cool because I am witnessing the season from the very beginning.

The next meeting was for the "clubs" line. CK Jeans develops a special line for the discount clubs such as Costco and Sams Club. These designs are usually simplified versions of the main line. We met with the girl in charge of it and discussed how we were going to simplify a cargo short and pant to get a lower base cost. Basically we are taking off the little details such as extra stitching and little extra pockets. We will have the samples by July 1st.

Next we met with Chris and looked over "bulk wash submits" from the factories. These are samples of the final dye/wash of the jeans before they get done to the entire batch or order. We compare these submits with the original sample to approve or reject it. Some of the submits were way off in color compared to the sample we had sent the factory, to the point that you were suprised that the factory even bothered to send it to us. That meeting was short, only about 15 minutes.

Next I got to work some in Excel, which I love doing because I know Excel really well and can finish work quickly in it. I worked with the buy plan again, this time I was adding in cost for production and total markup precent to wholesale. I did this for all the knits and tees, and tomorrow I will finish with the rest of the line.

I really enjoyed getting to sit in on all the meetings today. I'm starting to get a better idea of how the whole process works, and every day I am loving this job more.

posted by Jessica @ 8:38 PM