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The department store's vice president of merchandising discusses retail as the company orepares for its 150th anniversary
JOY PLACE IS ON THE HUNT for new products.
As the vice president of merchandising at department store chain Von Maur, she wants to know what people are buying - and what they will likely purchase in the future. That means scouring through the internet and data sets, attending vendor meetings to scope out thousands of new products and brands, talking with her team of buyers to discuss what they've seen and even shopping at local boutiques on weekends. The end goal is to curate the best possible assortment for her stores.
"If you're in the retail industry, especially on the buying side, you have to be all over social media and looking at what the competition is doing, and certainly we have a lot of our own internal reporting for us to monitor things on a daily, weekly basis of what's selling, what's not selling, what's up trending, what's down trending," Place told WWD. "[Part of the job] is just being aware of, even, the people who you're friends with and socialize with. What are they talking about? And what are they wearing? What are they asking about? Where's everybody's head right now? I think it's about being open to all of that to figure out how do those [trends] apply to what we carry in our stores.
"There are so many neat products out there," she continued. "Maybe they started out because of social media. Everyone is on their phones and that's how they're shopping right now. So there are so many brands that you can find on Instagram and social media outlets that are really intact. It's just a unique thing that we can offer to our customers to make our mix different from everyone else.
"We've always had a bottom-up approach," Place added. "It's about expanding the assortment of the brands that are doing well for us. If we're experimenting with a brand, it's not uncommon for us to just roll it out to every location, if we can. We have that gut instinct sometimes and we go with it. If we feel like it's something that's going to be good for our...