The US apparel industry: a supply chain review (B)

This is an excerpt from a report. The link is provided at the end of the post.

Note the following:

• This is apparel retailing.
• The selection of buyers for the research as "mostly involved with purchasing decisions".
• Store manager "has responsibilities in the daily maintenance of the store operations".

While both these are vital, important roles in traditional retail, the direct model of networking in apparel retail is founded and sustained by age-old one-on-one relationships.

* * *

In apparel retailing, we talked to a former buyer for a major retail chain: Ms. Jennings and a
buyer/owner of an independent boutique: Ms. Massoudian. Ms. Jennings worked for six years as an
assistant buyer, department manager, group sales manager, cosmetics and fragrance manager, and
operations manager for a large department store, which we will call LDS throughout the paper, and two years as store manager for The Gap. Ms. Massoudian owned an independent high-end women’s
apparel store in Palos Verdes, California and was mostly involved with purchasing decisions. We
selected buyers for our research contact, since the buyer is the person who directly makes the
decisions for what to buy, whom to buy from, how much to buy, how much to price, when to
mark–down, and how much to mark–down, whereas the store manager of a store in a chain has
responsibilities in the daily maintenance of the store operations (both personnel and merchandise),
and the chain executive is more concerned with financial control and administrative policy making.

Would you like to post your comments to this article?
http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~alpersen/Papers/ApparelReview_Sen_October_2004.pdf.