What is Fashion Merchandising?
Fashion merchandising is the combination of the processes that a new fashion item must go through to be available in mass quantities to the consumer after it is left the hands of the designer. Fashion merchandising often gets confused with fashion marketing and although they work together, they are two very different things. To understand fashion merchandising completely, it is important to examine the role that fashion merchandising plays in manufacturing, buying, promoting and selling fashion items. In regards to manufacturing, a fashion merchandiser will have significant input on the types of fabrics used to make a piece of clothing. Having a strong historical and socio-cultural understanding of the fabrics, help change a designer’s vision into reality. By applying their knowledge about fabric and clothing construction, a fashion merchandiser will take a designer’s piece and find the best way to manufacture the item while taking things like price and target market into consideration
Once the Fashion Marketers have identified the target group for a new line of clothing, how do they decide when and where to sell them? How do these clothes make it into the stores and malls where you and I can find them? This is the job of the Fashion Merchandiser. Fashion Marketing and Fashion Merchandising go hand-in-hand. Fashion Merchandisers must also be able to predict styles and trends and evaluate the needs of a target market. However, whereas the Fashion Marketer identifies such needs in order to build more successful advertising campaigns to attract consumers, the Fashion Merchandiser is responsible for actually buying the clothes and presenting them in the stores. Fashion Merchandisers must also be very creative and forward thinking. One of the jobs of a Fashion Merchandiser is ‘Visual Merchandising’: shaping the mood of a store or runway with lighting and displays to aid and encourage consumers with their purchase. Fashion Merchandising is the hands-on job of selecting whi
