Saks and Bloomingdales

            While I’ve known for a few weeks that my last weeks at Shoshanna were coming up I hadn’t really hit me until this week. It somehow has gotten out around the office very quickly that next week is my last and now all anyone seems to be able to say when I walk into the room is some variation of “ we can’t believe you’re leaving already”. While it has been sad to think of I can’t say I have too much time to linger on it. I have been busy calling every store we sell to in order to make appointments for next weeks Atlanta Market. At this point this seems like something I could do in my sleep as I have done it for other markets and each time we have over 100 stores to call.

            Luckily things still felt fresh this week as I made a trip to Bloomingdales and Saks to merchandise our sections as well as do some detective work about how the clothes is doing. While I didn’t expect much of difference in the stores they were actually much different then I had though they would be. Everything in Saks was so beautifully displayed and there was very little for me to do in terms of reorganizing and making presentation up to standards. When I spoke with one of the women who worked in the department she said the merchandisers had been there recently and I could tell she wasn’t lying.

            On the other hand Bloomingdales was much more disorganized and the racks that they had our merchandise on were not very big so the clothes really couldn’t be displayed in a beautiful way. I fixed what I could with what I was given but there defiantly needs to be another rack added to the area so it is easier to see our dresses. Also unlike Saks, Bloomingdales carries our swim line and when I went to the swim section there was almost nothing there! After calling the office we were able to figure out that all the merchandise from our original shipment was sold and they just needed to order more. It was a bittersweet moment as everyone was happy swim was selling so well but at the same time was disappointed that it was allowed to get so low.

            In these last few weeks its great to have new and interesting things to do but it also reminds me how much I have to learn since there are so many things that can be new.