Lab time!

Crabtree

*We had a little mix up-- both Laura and Gina wrote about our visit with Megan. However, there are some differences in the posts so we're keeping both! Enjoy!*

We got to spend Friday with Megan Wakefield, who is the ASM (Area Sales Manager) for Polo in Belk. We had previously met her in passing, but it was really cool to spend more time with her and get a full run-down on how things work on her end. She started off by getting to know us a little better, then she began educating us on the general history of Polo and Belk.

She also explained the importance of market share, which is defined as "the percentage of an industry or market's total sales that is earned by a particular company over a specified time period." She showed us one of the main Excel sheets called the "Polo Scorecard" which illustrates the market share for all of the different Polo doors. Along with that, she showed us the store sales plan by week for Polo in Crabtree, which helps the stores keep up with their actual sales compared to their sales plan. The Monthly Planner also helps the specialists with this goal, showing their Daily LY, Week to Date LY, and Month to Date LY, then they have the space to put what they are actually making compared to those numbers. She said most stores don't do all of this in-depth calculation, which may explain why they don't do quite as well as Crabtree!

We were a bit confused as to what all the lingo was around Belk such as "Pacesetter" and "Consultant," then some people were "Specialists," and Megan did a great job of telling us all the differences, making it clear that being a Consultant was every employee's goal and Specialists are solely for the Polo shop. Another thing that was news to us, was that every employee in the Crabtree Polo shop was actually a Specialist!

We talked about the Polo shop and how BSR (Basic Stock Replenishment) is so important due to the fact that it is 28% of total Polo business for Belk, and also because it is a full margin product and makes the store, Belk, and Polo Ralph Lauren profitable! Lastly, she showed us the computer system and "The Hanger," which is where they pull the numbers to do their daily comparisons. It was great of Megan to dedicate her day to us and I think we all took a lot from our shadowing experience.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Southpoint & Crabtree

On Monday we spent the morning in Southpoint, since their numbers had gone down some after the Father's Day craze. We made a few changes in the shop and did some recovery so everything could hopefully bounce back. We then went to Crabtree to help do some basic recovery and go over sales with the specialists there. It was a low-key day but a good one, and we also got to spend some time working on our project which was a huge help.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Greensboro

Tuesday we woke up bright and early to get to Belk at Friendly Center in Greensboro. We started off by listening in on a conference call concerning changes being made in certain stores in the division. We then went straight to Children's wear to try and solve some problems. We stayed at Belk for about four hours, moving merchandise around trying to simplify the area with the space available. We ended up with three different rows of product, all much more organized and sized than it was when we found it. It felt like a very productive morning!

After we took a lunch break, we headed straight to the Eagle Hill facility to meet everyone that was there for Lab, and also so we could begin getting all the product ready. We met SO many great people involved with Men's Wholesale/Retail Development right when we got there, such as Brett Banks, who is the Director of Presentation and stationed in New York, Junji Romero - the Visual Director who is also from New York, Robert Stanchina, Senior Director from New York, then Tom Parks who is the Regional Director out of Chicago, Brian Trauthwein - the Regional Director out of Miami, and finally Aaron Milasich who is the Regional Director out of San Francisco. It was such a great group of people to be learning from, and it seemed like they were very glad we were there to help.

It was nice having the Charlotte interns there to help, and we spent a large part of that day folding and setting up concept tables to prepare for the photographer the following day. The Children's wear team had already been working on their set up, so I took pictures of those and you can see them below. The picture of the men's store is the finished product on Wednesday - everything looks perfect as you can see!

Children's

Children's

Behind the scenes

New Equestrian Line

Laura

Day in the life of Megan, Belk ASM

Wednesday

Cary Towne Center

We met at Cary Towne Center Wednesday because their store was falling far behind their goals and plan. We rearranged the floor according to price points and different sales going on. The next week their business jumped by 25%! Success!

Thursday

Crabtree Valley Mall

We spend Thursday with Megan Wakefield, the ASM (Area Sales Manager) of Men’s Polo in Belk. We first started with the history of Belk and Ralph Lauren, learning that Belk has four flagship locations; SouthPark mall (Charlotte), Crabtree Valley Mall (Raleigh), The Summit (Birmingham), and Phipps Plaza (Atlanta). We also learned that Belk is one of the last privately owned retail chains in the country.

Megan then led us through all of the “numbers” behind the company and Ralph Lauren. She reviewed how to read weekly/monthly/yearly sales plans, as Cynthia had taught us. We were given a deeper explanation as to what “market share” really means. The definition of market share, according to handouts that Megan gave us, is “the percentage of an industry or market’s total sales that is earned by a particular company over a specified time period. Market share is calculated by taking the company’s sales over the period and dividing it by the total sales of the industry over the same period.” Thus, the market share is a good metric to give a general idea of the size of a company to its market and it’s competitors. Belk at Crabtree competes with only  one department store, Macy’s. A company always wants to increase their market share and can do so by appealing to larger demographics, lowering prices, or through advertising.

Megan had us interns look at the Polo market share versus the total store. There are a ton of numbers to intake but it’s easily broken up on a spreadsheet which categorizes the information in different columns by market share, the tier of Polo, the division it’s in, sales, gross margin, Key items (BSR), market share MTD/YTD, and selling specialist/associate breakdowns. Another piece of information Megan shared with us was the Merchandise, Location and Assortment Planning spreadsheet which held information such as Sales numbers, inventory levels, stock sales, gross receipts, etc. Then, we went back to our familiar handy dandy spreadsheet of Belk’s Sales numbers that Cynthia reviews with us each morning.

This is long winded, I know, but hang on tight!

FUN FACTS ABOUT RALPH LAUREN BSR:

• ·         Stands for Basic Stock Replenishment
• ·         Represents 28% of the total Polo Ralph Lauren business for Belk for spring season
• ·         These items are ALWAYS carried, refilling automatically via computer generated order
• ·         These products are extremely dear to Ralph Lauren because they provide full profit margin (AKA, they never go on sale, so no money lost is money gained!)
• ·         #1 seller: S/S White Classic Mesh, Belk sold 5,300 units of this in 2010!

Megan wrapped up the day with a fun contest between us interns, we drew questions out of a bag and answered them with the information we learned that day! Great way to end the day! Thanks Megan!!!

Gina

…dying for more?

BSR FUN FACTS, round 2!

• ·         Mesh is 68% of total knit business
• ·         Custom fit mesh is 10% of total mesh business
• ·         Interlock 32% of total knit business
• ·         Tee’s are 12% of total buy (includes graphic tee’s)
• ·         Shorts 13% of the total  buy
• ·         Oxford Woven shirts represent 21% of total buy

That’s all folks!

Crabtree and Southpoint

Friday, June 15, 2012

Crabtree

     The second week has come and gone, and we are already making headway on the third. It is crazy how quickly everything has flown by and how much we have already learned. On Friday we began the day by going over numbers as we usually do, seeing what we needed to re-arrange or fix to gear up for Father’s Day. The main change we made was moving the tissue chino pants to the front table adjacent to dress shirts, along with moving the vests that were already there to a back table. Cynthia told us these changes were necessary due to the fact that they are more of a lightweight pant – so they should be gone after this season. After we did the pants Gina and I went to the seersucker shirts and made sure there was a size run of every color. For the ones that were lacking important sizes like large and extra large, we went to the back stockroom and found those sizes to bring them out to the floor.

     We spent the remainder of the day working in children’s wear, trying to consolidate all of the sale merchandise to its respectable area. That was a bit more difficult considering it is split into different age groups, starting with Layettes, then Toddlers, then finally sizes 8-20. There was a lot of merchandise that was not marked down yet, so we got the markdown guns and went to town on all of the items. It was pretty satisfying to leave the store knowing we had fixed up that whole area.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Southpoint

      On Saturday morning Will and I got up bright and early to go to Southpoint for Father’s Day, while Cynthia and Gina held down the fort in Crabtree. There are already five specialists in Crabtree so Will and I went to help Welton as much as we could. Neither of us were aware that they handed out gift cards to the first 100 customers, so we were taken by surprise when there was a line outside the door at 8 a.m. When we went inside Belk, there were many customers perusing the Father’s Day sales – one was a $100 gift card winner. The first thing we decided to tackle was the children’s department, making sure all the price points and markdowns were correct. They all seemed to be in the right area, so we went over to the men’s shop to find Welton and get started with some recovery.

     Will and I “hashed” the Ethan pants for Welton, and then straightened up the Preston pants that were on a table in front. After we did some basic recovery in the men’s shop, we went down to Macy’s to make sure all the price points and sales were equivalent to those in Belk. There was only one group of shirts that had a price difference, and it was so small that Welton decided to leave them the way they were. There was not nearly as much traffic in Macy’s as there was in Belk, although Nordstrom seemed to be really picking up when we went through there. We went back to the shop and Welton quizzed us on certain products and their characteristics – to make sure we’ve been doing our homework, and we talked to him about his selling techniques and such. After we finished all of our tasks, we reported to Tammy Davis, the Sales Team Manager, and told her all about our day.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Crabtree

     On Monday we went to Crabtree to help recover after the big Father’s Day weekend. It really wasn’t in that bad of shape, so we didn’t have to do as much as we thought we would. We did have some new opportunities, however, such as hearing all about the Rock the Dock program with Larry (who seemed to be mostly in charge of it), and he went into the software program with us to show how things are received and processed. He also took us in a creepy elevator down to the loading/unloading dock areas, where we got to get a full look at what goes on behind-the-scenes. It was a lot to absorb, but all really interesting. 

     Another cool thing we got to do was sit in on a webinar, which was basically a meeting with all the Belk managers and Caesar Lamonaca (the store manager), telling about the new fall products in all of the departments. We only sat in for the men’s wear part, and we got to hear about new upcoming styles such as slimmer pants and knit ties. We felt pretty important to get to sit in on the meeting.

After all our big events, we re-dressed some mannequins to accentuate the BSR and full-priced items, since basically everything in the shop is on sale right now. We also re-stocked the swim area, doing some fill-ins so they could be well represented on the floor. Looking forward to the rest of week three!

-Laura

Here is a photo of a mesh wall we worked on, you can see the standards that RL keeps!

      

Before 

After

Crabtree and Triangle Town Center

Week 2

Tuesday- Crabtree (Flagship)

     Tuesday we were at Crabtree, our main store. In the morning we went over numbers and talked about how the store did over the weekend and great news—our sales were up from last week and we beat last years plan! Moving the merchandise around on the floor really was effective. The numbers are thrilling to look over as they provide concrete data reinforcing what changes we made on the sales floor are not in vain.

     We went over to Big & Tall to recover and gear up for the Father’s Day weekend (RL’s biggest weekend next to Christmas). We rearranged the swim trunks (AKA “baggies” in the salt life world), shirts and shorts to make the Big & Tall area more fluid.

     We made a quick visit to the “Rock the Dock” area and the prop room. “Rock the Dock” is a team that Belk implemented to get merchandise off the trucks, unboxed and out on the sales floor at unnaturally early hours before customers and even associates get to Belk. There are three shifts; one starts at 4:30AM, another at 5:30AM and the last at 6:30AM. Yikes. This team was created to alleviate a lot of complaints from customers. Before the Rock the Dock team associates were expected to put out merchandise during the day between customers, however this became problematic when customers voiced that the associates were concentrating too much on restocking and thus were less concentrated on helping them. Another reason Rock the Dock was created was for the safety of the customer—no more large carts with merchandise fill and crowd the already snug aisles, a disaster waiting to happen.

     We took a trip over to Women’s Swim in Belk and checked on the beach bags we moved over there the previous week. It didn’t look like anything had been sold. Maybe price point is too high? Maybe people aren’t buying beach bags yet? …Who knows?

Will in the Big & Tall

Wednesday

Triangle Town Center (Low Tier 3)

     Wednesday morning we started at Triangle Town Center, our first visit here! It’s a smaller shop and very manageable. We went over numbers in the morning and this location is doing very well. They are uptrending in just about everything except for pants, accessories and dress shirts. The explanations behind these, though, are interesting. Cynthia said not to be worried by the downtrend in pants because the sales on shorts have increased; they tend to have a balancing relationship depending on the season. Dress shirts were down because they were actually removed from this store. This is because it is a low tier 3 and certain products that are not selling well should not take up the precious space.

     We went into the Saks Fifth Avenue to do a bit of comparative analysis between Belk. They carry women’s Black Label but no longer carry men’s RL products (I don’t have an explanation why, unfortunately).

     One other thing to note was that when we were working on the fashion groups Head of Charles and Beach Shop some of the components/products were missing. This is again, due to the fact Triangle is such a low volume store. 

Compared to the Southpoint picture of this fashion group,

 you can tell there are a lot less items sent to Triangle.

-Gina

Southpoint and Cary Towne Center

Week 18 (Our first week)

Southpoint (Tier 2)

     Following the first few days of the internship, myself, Laura and Gina had become decently versed in reading and discussing numbers regarding the percentage uptrend and downtrend of Polo products compared to the previous weeks sales numbers.  Consequently, for the third day of our internship we were asked to look up and record the uptrends and downtrends (specifically focusing on downtrends) of the products polo sold last week compared to this week at the Southpoint Belk store location. The percentage downtrends read: Pants, down 11.7%% -- Dress shirts, down 84.1% -- Knit tops, down 40.4% -- Denim, down 75.3% -- Sweaters, down 33.8% -- Shorts, down 44.4%.  With this knowledge we were able to discuss possible reasons of why the products were down and what we could do to increase sales.  Therefore, our morning task comprised of moving the downtrending products to other spots of the floor so that they would be more accessible to the incoming customer in efforts to increase sales in the downtrending Polo products.  As well as fixing product placement (of the downtrend items) in the store, we worked on merchandising the two main fashion groups – Head of Charles and Beach Shop.  While working with these two main fashion groups we made sure the display tables matched the corporate directives from New York in terms of where to place the shorts, pants, and shirts on the table and also how to arrange the manikins so the products were adequately displayed.

     After our work in the store (rearranging products and merchandising fashion groups) we visited Macy’s to view their Ralph Lauren products, specifically the Denim and Supply line that is exclusive only to Macy’s. The product line was comparable to the Rugby line and we were able to view the line and price points of other Polo merchandise as well. Along with looking at Macy’s the team visited a sundry amount of stores including: Urban Outfitters, Anthropology, Free People, Eddie Bauer, and J. Crew.  During those store visits we compared the product lay out of Ralph Lauren and how much the corporate structure of the company dictates how Polo is to exhibit products.  The store comparisons allowed for insight into how non-corporate driven stores displayed their products and the free-range creativity they are given. Overall the store visits were interesting/informative because we had a different mindset when walking in each store.  

"Head of Charles" fashion group (below)

"Beach Shop" fashion group (below)

Week 19 (Our second week)

Cary Towne Center (Tier 3)

The start of the second week landed the team in Cary Towne Center where we, like Southpoint, reviewed the stores numbers and percentages of uptrends and downtreads and where the store was in sales compared to the previous day.  After review of the numbers we began to move certain products to hopefully increase sales of the downtrending products.  While moving products, we were introduced to Karen Greager, the Regional VP of Stores at Belk.  Karen inquired about the internship and then about our opinions of how Belk could reach a younger market.  We discussed the use of social media from Facebook to Twitter and how more integration of these social media sites could further help Belk reach the younger buying market.  When we returned to the merchandise we learned how Polo arranges their pleated pants – by hashing.  Hashing consists of sizing the pants and then arranging the colors from black, khaki, navy and stone.  Later on, we visited both Dillard’s and Macy’s and discussed market share amongst the stores in comparison to Polo merchandise.  The verdict rendered Belk as having the most market share with sales of Polo product, which is the portion of a market controlled by a particular product or company.

Hashed Pleated "Ethan" Pants (Right)

-Will

Laura's First Week

Day one was an eventful one - the other interns and I arrived at Belk in Crabtree around 10 a.m., to be welcomed by Cynthia and the Ralph Lauren sales associates. Everyone was very nice, and Cynthia got down to business by going over the numbers from the previous day and week. She explained how they compare their sales to other stores, especially the SouthPark store in Charlotte due to the tight competition.

After we were filled in on all the numbers, she showed us the important stock rooms  that was stocked with merchandise for various purposes. It was interesting to see these secret closets that I would have never noticed as a customer simply shopping in these departments. There were many BSR items (which I learned quickly meant “Basic Stock Replenishment, makes sense), so that the customer wouldn’t have to wait very long to get those items if they weren’t on the floor.

Cynthia explained how sometimes after a large weekend - or just any weekend in general - the stores may be in a bit of a chaotic state, so we helped re-arrange some areas and eventually tackled the mesh wall. I never would have imagined that so much thought goes into placing polo shirts in shelves on a wall. I should have known better with my visual merchandising experience, but I quickly learned how to “jellybean” the shirts by placing different colors (complementary, however) beside each other and perfecting all the folds. 

Another interesting highlight was when Cynthia showed us the standards for the displays. Since we just had the opportunity to visit the Greensboro distribution facilities, we got a sneak peek at the showroom where they create these universal displays that are to be followed. She showed us the photos and we re-arranged The Head of the Charles merchandise to mimic the pictures as closely as possible. She noted that sometimes it is necessary to alter them a bit depending on the region (i.e. since we are in the South, it is much hotter, so we should use lighter colors where we can).

I should have taken a picture of the mesh wall to really illustrate that part of the post, but I’ll be sure to take a photo of the next eventful instance. Overall, I really enjoyed getting my behind-the-scenes view of everything on the first day, and I can’t wait to continue week one!

First Daze

I feel so grateful to be a Ralph Lauren Intern! It's only day two (technically) and I've already learned so much from Cynthia. She is such a great teacher and mentor-- I couldn't have asked to shadow anyone better! Now, I'll go on to talk about what I learned on Day 1 and Day 2!


Day 1


We started the day with going over numbers, lots of them. Cynthia guided us through all the acronyms, percentages, colors, and such. We then got the tour of Polo Ralph Lauren- Men's and Children's Department. I learned all sorts of fun things like what it means to be a Flagship and Tier 1-4 store. Flagship stores make over a million a year. Tier 1 stores make between $700,000 and a million a year and Tier 2 makes between $500,000 and $700,000 a year, and so on and so forth. Crabtree happens to make enough to be considered a Flagship store. I'm not exactly sure what I can and cannot disclose so I'll keep numbers vague.


We learned a lot of vocabulary the first day, one for example (my favorite) is "jelly bean". "Jelly beaning" is a Ralph Lauren term that means to put contrasting colors adjacent to each other to make a visual pop. This makes their iconic wall of shirts, well, iconic. They do not use a monochromatic method to display their clothes in order to avoid making their colors look "muddy". Many acronyms flew around the first day, too. I am grateful my schooling at NC State has provided me experience with many of the terms like POS, WTD, etc. This makes the whole process a lot easier, now I just need to retain the new acronyms like BSS, BSR, GSO, STD...(the list goes on)!


Oh, and I learned how to fold clothes. Lots of clothes.


Day 2


The night before, Cynthia sent recaps of last weeks sales in Crabtreee and Charlottesville and the Polo Weekly Selling report. This is where the COT at NCSU has really helped; I was able to read most of the reports and make educated guesses about some seemingly random numbers and acronyms. After Cynthia explained what the reports meant, I had a clearer view on what it meant to the company. We learned what items in the Crabtree store were trending downward. In order to increase sales, we went out to the floor and brainstormed how to position the clothing in a better way to drive sales. I can't wait to see the numbers! It will be a great feeling, a very satisfying one, if I see the numbers next week and they are better because of the positioning of the items.