Outré May, 2014 | Page 41

What is vital when working your way up the employment ladder? Learn from each person you work with, oth the good and bad parts. Copy the ood bits and remember the bad bits. t’s really important that you learn essons from those you work with so you don’t make the same mistakes.” So what’s your favourite trend from S/S ‘1 4? “Neon, because it’s fun!” What qualifications do you have? A levels, and when I left school I joined retail management training scheme at Beaties.” So do you think it’s vital for your employees to have a degree? think it’s important, but it isn’t verything. Experience is as important f not more than a degree. From working n the shop floor and selling to a ustomerI found the transistion from elling to customers and selling to buyers airly simple. I actually understood what he customer wanted and how the hop floor works. It’s really important o sell the correct item in the correct mount so they trust you and want to work with you again. “ So with that being said, would you say hat there is an element of customer service within your job? Definitely. Sales is about understanding he customer profile that you’re selling o and building a level of trust with he client. It’s also important that you work with the Buyers, if something oesn’t work you help them with hat situation and make it work for hem. You have to know the business nd customer base that the Buyers re buying for.It’s also vital that you monitor sales in and sales out.” It sounds like you’ve worked with a lot of customers! Who have been your favourite to work with and why? “I love working with Next, they’re very open. They aren’t afraid to share information and know very clearly who their customer is, making them easy to work with. Fig Leaves are great too because they’re so open to trying something new and different”. So are they your biggest customers too? “Next are probably the biggest.” What other people within Ultimo do you work with? “The Marketing and Design teams”. So what’s that like? “With the Design team I have to feedback to them what’s happeneing in the market, what is and isn’t working for our customers. This means I get a good input in the seasonal collections, which can be really fun! For Marketing it’s all about giving them information on the competitors and making sure that the marketing activity will work for customers.” What does your average week consist of? “Customer visits, I visit most of my customers at least once a month. Lots of paperwork and answering emails”