New Projects at Work

       This past week at work has been filled with lots of unrelated small projects. One of our accounts had a two-week long sales contest amongst their employees. We received the sales data in an excel document showing price, color, style, amount on hand, cost, original price, price marked, and the sales dollars for each item for each week. I'm not too familiar with exactly what type of store this account is specifically, (their clientele, their price points, their specialty, etc.) so I could only draw my own conclusions from the data. My main concern was interpreting sales performance prior to the contest, during the contest, and after the contest to really evaluate the effectiveness of the sales contest. Working on this project has helped me brush up on my Microsoft Excel skills as well as my retail math skills. One interesting thing I noticed is that for each item that was ordered in multiple colors, black was always marked at the highest price (upwards of $15-$30 more expensive than other colors!) yet it always outsold the other colors tenfold. The project was a little tedious, but it was interesting seeing how this account prices out every single item at a discount. Most of our accounts sell The North Face product at retail price.
        The other project involved our baselayer apparel as I mentioned last week. We have received 119 samples from The North Face of our standard baselayer zip-neck top for men and women. Almost 2/3 of the samples are mens, and only 1/3 of the samples are womens product. Our goal is to send out the samples to our action sports accounts, as well as our accounts that ordered baselayer this year. However, when we are sending out these samples we are really striving to get the sample to someone who will actually use it. Buyers receive free samples of everything, but aren't always the most active people within a company. If there is a young, athletic employee that works in the store who spends a lot of their time skiing or snowboarding, the sample would be much more useful to them. We really want someone to truly test the product that we are so proud of, in order to receive accurate feedback. One of the variables of this project is that we have assorted sizes for each gender, so there's no way to really ensure that each account receives the optimal size for them. Our baselayer is so unique due to our Flashdry technology. FlashDry™ is our fastest drying fabric ever. It sets a new standard in sweat removal and temperature regulation. It acts like your second skin, pushing moisture to the fabric surface and eliminating it.
      This week I also entered some orders that were faxed in late, and filed all of our Fall 2013 orders to date. One thing I learned when entering orders that I never learned in classes was the importance of getting an order in on time when it comes to the financial aspect. Depending on when you place your order, you can receive certain terms (you get to choose your discount terms which most of us have learned about in class), however, if you are late submitting your order, you are no longer eligible to receive your terms. Being late can really cost you if you are placing a large order.