• >

 Segments of the Garment Industry: Where the Jobs Are?

If you are not lucky enough to have the contacts to land a job in the fashion industry,some of the ways to break into this industry:

Retail

•  Retail Sales representative- It is by getting a sales job in the retail apparel or departmental store.These positiions are called selling specialists. In this position you become a liaison for the store, the buying office and the manufacturer. You are responisble for the optimising sales through presentation, promotion, and good customer service. This job involves a keen eye for colour and presentation, strong communication skills and some good merchandising math skills to complete departmental paper work.Being a selling specialist is a wonderful career opportunity because it opens avenues to both merchandising and design, since you might work directly with the designers and manufacturers.

• Store operations- Some sales employees advance to department manager or group manager. these supervisory jobs are centered around training, educating, and scheduling sales and stock people. Keeping track of inventories, setting the floor,and anything else that makes the branch store run are included in the manager's responsibilities.

• Merchandising-

Merchandising is involved in the selecting, buying and distribution of assortments of items to vaious branch stores, and the coordination and planning of sales and promotions. The career path is generally from assistant buyer to associate buyer to buyer.

  >

Manufacturing

• Design

Most people have heard of garment design. It requires specialised technical and art training, with skills in both flat and compurter pattern making. There is a lot of competition for those plum jobs. Be willing to start with anything remotely related and work up to a design position. Strong draping skills, with a keen eye for colour and texture, are essential. The more technical skills you can acquire(garment construction, fabric construction), the more successful you will be when you design. Designers must have first rate skills to create, produce, and promote their products. They must always be looking for ways to be leaders.

• Textile Design

Textile design is a combination job between pure art (pattern, print design) and technical concerns(printing techniques, weaving techniques). Many companies use freelance help to provide fabric design, partiularly prints. There are large print services that show and sell thousands of print designs to mills, wholesale, product developers, and retailers. Many textile designers focus their efforts in textile design to create new and interesting fabrics.

• Merchandising

A merchandising expedites the process of putting together the wholesale or private label line. Responsibilities include planning styles and inventory quantities, delivery by delivery. Also critical is keeping track of the status of the line from concept to delivery. The merchandiser works closely with the designer to put the line together and with the production department to get to the line made up.

•  Production

Production work is mostly technical, with some candidates actually coming up from frontline or  supervisory factory jobs. They are responsible for coordinating fabric delivery to factories, scheduling raw materials for construction of the clothing line, and shipping finished orders to stores takes a great deal of coordination and customer service ability. A strong knowledge of sewing and other  individual production operations will be an advantage. 

• Sourcing

If a wholesaler imports a line, the process is slightly different. Overseas contractors need to be located(sourced) and then controls put in place to make sure that production is executed correctly at a very long distance. This job requireds frequent overseas travel and a sensitivity to cultural differences.

• Sales and Marketing

For this job you have got to have the right personality! There are lots of really strong salespeople in the wholesale markets, and they have spoiled the retail buyers to the point where you have probably going to have to put up with quite a lot from the buyers, your customers. Buyers are trained to push hard for anything they can get, reasonable or not.

A sales professional must always stay 'positive' every day. You must be pleasant to even the most unpleasant buyer. Sales people test themselves every day. Unlike many other jobs in fashion, a salesperson does have instant gratification- when an order is placed.(or instant rejection when it is not!)

 

 If you can do any one above in tandem with study at a fashion institute or technically focused college majoring in design, retailling, or business, you will be well on your way.