Week four as an Assistant Buyer for Ross Stores

From my last post, I have started training as a merchant intern for Ross Buying Office working 40 hours a week.  I am overwhelmed with happiness as I finished my first week of  adventures. My first day of orientation consisted of a brief overview to the career path at the buying office, the value of off-price retailing, and inspiring words from the President and CMO, Barbara Rentler, and CEO and Vice President, Michael Balmuth.

I am interning in the Home Functional Ceramics business where I am learning the trends, best sellers, and price points that the Ross customer values. As an intern, I have my own desk and computer, where I am able to access my own email account and Ross’ computer programs. These past few weeks I experienced a variety of responsibilities and duties of an Assistant Buyer. I have learned all the reports that a buyer looks at from daily, weekly, to monthly. Maintaining knowledge and updating these reports are crucial to my business. I have been fortunate enough to attend and observe negotiations at over  over 10 vendor meetings as well as experience two kosher meals (“comped”  by Ross!). Ross has also provided the interns with weekly training classes on important business aspects such as off-price philosophy, negotiation skills, comparison shopping, retail mathematics and weekly processes, and key components to becoming a successful buyer.

Starting week four tomorrow, I am very surprised at how hands-on my internship is and the fact that my buyer respects my opinion. In my spare time, I have gone to Long Beach twice, celebrated my 22nd, learned to dodge tourists, and enjoyed happy hours with fellow co-workers (corporate America style).

Hope everyone is having a great summer, can’t believe it is already July!

Best,

Chelsea Fischer

First 3 Weeks at Club Monaco in NYC

The past three weeks I have been spending my summer in NYC interning with the Visual team at Club Monaco.  My internship consists of concepting each month’s new clothing line in the corporate showroom (this week we worked with the February 2011 collection) and  also flipping flagship stores every three weeks.  During “flip” we create the visual atmosphere with each month’s collection in two Club Monaco stores that is then signed off by the corporate merchants and finally the CEO, John Mehas.  I have been involved with the process once already and will be doing it for the second time next week for the brand new July collection.  I was not expecting as much manual labor as I participate in but now fully appreciate the essence of wonderful NY windows and stores and their over-the-top visual techniques.

In my personal life, I have already met with the CEO of Collective Brands, Matt Rubel, spent a day at Long Beach, agreed to participate in market week for Avon cosmetics with the PR department and spent multiple nights out on the town with my fellow UA interns and students!

First day at Collective Brands PLG

Hey there everyone my name is Melissa, and this is my first blogging post so bear with me! I am in Lexington, Massachusetts right now working with Collective Brands Inc. The office here is the Performance and Lifestyle group which includes Keds, Sperry Top-Sider, Stride Rite, and Saucony.  There are 26 other interns here (mostly from the Mass. area) compared to only 16 last summer! We are all spread out within the brands but also work with each other on a corporate project to present to the company leaders. We started out orientation today with numerous presentations ranging from the company background, an IT introduction, to how a shoe is actually made! After the building tour (which is incredible) we went off to our cubicles in the departments. I met my supervisor and employees that I will be spending the rest of the summer with. There are many projects I will be completing while I am here, which are based around the Stride Rite Children’s Group. I jumped right into some marketing research today as well as attended an ecomm overview meeting of all of the brands. Before I knew it the day was over…I can’t wait to get back in the morning!

-Melissa

Off to New York City on Friday!

Hello All! I’m Chelsea and I’m this fall 2010′s Chair for the Student Advisory Board. I am very excited to be leaving this Friday from Scottsdale,AZ to New York, NY for my Assistant Buyer internship with Ross’ Buying Office. As an Assistant Buyer for Ross stores,I will be doing a variety of tasks in the Dinner/Ceramics division, such as: stock analysis, open-to-buy, attending vendor meetings, purchase orders, communicating with my Buyer, and more! I am eager to gain buying experience in a corporate office in the fashion capital of the United States! I feel well-prepared with the Retailing and Consumer Sciences as my major to uphold this prestigious and analytical internship.
My first day begins June 14 and lasts through August 6. I will keep you updated on my learning experiences…

**Good luck to all my fellow Ambassadors with your amazing experiences this summer!

Sincerely,

Chelsea Fischer

Student Advisory Board Chair

Change of Plans

Hello everyone, exciting news today! I have been offered a new position and informal internship with Guess in San Diego. I will be working both as a sales associate and also assisting in many of the upcoming promotional projects within and outside of the store. Guess is known for its visual merchandising so being a part of that should be a great learning experience for me. I can’t wait!!  I hope you are all enjoying your vacations, exciting internships and new adventures!

–Taylor Flower

Busy Bee

Hey Everyone,

After coming back from my short trip home to Florida, I’ll be presenting on my spring semester Kohl’s internship to our District Manager. A day later I’ll be packing up and heading out to Bentonville, Arkansas with Scott Rising, a fellow ambassador, for a second internship with Walmart Inc. I’ll let you all know how the presentation goes, and be sure to keep you updated during my internship!

-Dana

Getting Ready

Hello everyone! This is Adena, TJL student ambassador getting ready to pack up my life here in Arizona, spend a relaxing weekend at home in California (beach break!), and then ship off to Chicago!  I begin work Monday, May 24th at The Store — WPP, which, after receiving my employment paperwork, found out is a small part of the huge advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.  I am so excited to begin my work at The Store and find out more about what my duties will be and get more of a feel for the company– all I know right now that they provide marketing, public relations, and consulting services to both domestic and international retailers.  While I sometimes feel there is an emphasis on store management, buying/planning, and merchandising in our Retailing and Consumer Sciences major, I am so eager to explore this sector of retailing business.

I reconnected with an old friend who has a condo in Chicago’s South Loop– only about a mile from my downtown office– and I am so excited to settle in and explore the city. I also have family north in the suburbs so I will have a little familiarity when I need it.  I am thrilled to be able to blog here about my experiences and am even more thrilled to find out what those experiences will be!! Until then, I’m wishing everyone good luck on their finals and safe travels to their respective locations!

– Adena

Unwinding from the Global Retailing Conference

For MY personal testimony of the Global Retailing Conference for you, which I found extremely interesting and amazing, I will say that it was an opportunity EVERY Retailing student should take advantage of. When will you ever get to say that you met and spoke personally with the CEO of (fill in the blank) company when you were  in college? When will you get to say that they personally emailed you as well? Well…you can for sure say this after attending Global. I am so grateful for the opportunity I was given as a student to network and meet some of the most successful people in the retail industry.

As a Macy’s ambassador for the TJL Center, it was so great to meet Terry Lundgren himself. I wonder what he was thinking when he saw his name sewn on every ambassadors shirt?  He is so calm and inspiring. I think by the end of the conference he knew who I was…or I’d like to think that….

My second favorite part of the conference, after meeting Mr. Lundgren, was meeting his colleague and friend, Matt Rubel, the CEO of Collective Brands. It was so nice of him to take time out of his schedule and speak with students in our boardroom. He was there just to talk to us and answer whatever questions we had! So, of course, when the awkward silence began when we all sat down, I just started talking. I mean, hello, one hour to ask him anything, I was not just going to sit and wait for someone to be like, “So….what’s your favorite color?”… All in all, the round table session went very well, and I think every student left with some fabulous words of wisdom. It was great running into him again at the cocktail hour before the dinner that Wednesday night. I got some more wonderful advice from him and tucked it away for safe keeping for when I get to NYC this summer.

The speakers at the conference were very informational. I especially thought the speech from John Heinsen from Bunnygraph Entertainment was fascinating. I seriously want to go into stores one day, and look into the mirror and simply hold up a dress in front of me, and have it become automatically scanned into my image in front of me without ever going into a fitting room and dressing myself. I can’t remember if Mr. Heinsen said that this technology WAS invented or of it was in the works. Either way, AMAZING!! He said it even could put a certain color of lipstick onto your scanned image when you just hold up a lipstick tube in front of you. That would save several trips to Walgreens, buying the $1 lipsticks to test what color looks good on me.

Finally, my fourth favorite part was meeting Rachel Roy. I LOVE her designs. I never thought their was a designer that spoke to my style 100%, but OMG I was proven wrong. I must go shopping at her stores in NYC this summer. She was extremely humble and down-to-earth, that it was refreshing and inspiring to I think everyone in the room when she spoke. She is absolutely gorgeous and the entire time she spoke all eyes were on her. I follow her on Twitter and when she mentioned us in her tweet (meaning she wrote @UofARetail) I flipped out. I think all of us did actually.

After the conference, it was email time. I don’t want to lose the connections I made there at all!  I am so excited to see what these connections bring in the future. Brendan Dorrian is making me optimistic. He is so enthusiastic about the Retailing students.

I honestly loved every second of the jammed pack week. It was totally worth the 4:30 am alarm clock setting, venti mocha and hour drive to the Ritz Carlton. Now, all that is left is to go get all my suit attire dry-cleaned and ready for the next amazingly-professional event I have to attend.

Until then, I have Evening of Excellence details to finalize!

~Stephanie

The Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing at the University of Arizona

Where do companies go to find high potential talent for career placement in fashion, buying, business management or sales?  Where to find the strategic thinkers needed to fill career opportunities in e-commerce, logistics, visual merchandising or product development? The search for talent should begin with the University of Arizona’s Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing.