Julie Thiessen - Summer Internship Part 2

Daily Responsibilities:                                                         

Throughout the internship, our assistant buyer was promoted to associate buyer for petites. The lack of an assistant buyer allowed me to take on quite a bit of responsibility that otherwise would not have been available. This was a unique situation and was not foreseen. Taking on these responsibilities added a lot of activities to my daily routine.

      1.       Checking and responding to emails.

2.       Completing Intern “outputs”: these are complex activities that require you to answer several questions regarding your experience. These included: Bi-Weekly internship Ups and Downs, Getting to know your product, Senior Speaker Series, Vendor Meetings, Store Experience, Competitive Shopping, Ad Shopping, Job Shadowing: the Buying Team, Divisional Merchandising Manager, Inventory Manager, Inventory Planner/Analyst, Marketing Planning Manager, attending Training Sessions: Retail Math Review, Alex, Excel, SPRS, Workbench, Impact, and Reporting Tools.

3.       Entering pricing for each upcoming week, for each Laura Scott item, into a system called AdPlan.

4.       Entering the sales information for each previous week into the Monday Morning Report. I was responsible for only the advertised items at first, and eventually learned how to access the information for each Laura Scott item. This required accessing sales reporting tools, excel documents, calculating totals to find the Top 7 performing clothing programs for the corresponding week.

5.       Accessing and printing a multitude of sales and performance documents when requested.

6.       Assisting buying team in line reviews, Open to buy, Style outs, and Best/Worst sellers review meetings.

7.       Assisting with the advertising process for weekly circulars; set-up, obtains samples, ad proofing, subsidy collection, and post analysis recap.

8.       Create Line Item Comparative Analysis final project based on competitive analysis, store visits, comparing sales, turn productivity for each style, opportunities, SWOT analysis, styling/pricing comparison, market analysis, sales history, and future trend analysis.

9.       Working with our Inventory Manager and Planning team to obtain sales, financial and performance information for my final project.

    10.   Preparing a presentation on my final project for the Senior leadership team of         
            Merchandising, Divisional Merchandising Manager, SVP President and Vice
            President, Program Manager, Human Resources Managers, and Buyer Apprentices.

        11. Assisting with sample management projects.