The first stop today for our LVE group was in Merchandising. This department is responsible for selecting the brands, styles, colors, sizes and quantities for what you see for sale on our site. Merchandising tries to maximize "Service & Selection" for our customers by having the best combination of brands, seasonality, color and size size size! This is summed up in their motto “Right Product, Right Time, Right Quantity.”
To accomplish this they use a combination of "Science and Art." The "Science" comes from outside market research, trends from inhouse sales plans and comparisons to similar models. The "Art" part comes from predicting trends and “going with your gut.”
In this picture Noel, our eyewear and watch buyer, gets some help from Vanessa the Visionary on what to order for next season.
Good vendor relations is an important part of the Zappos Merchandising culture. Two tenets are “Open and Honest” and “Create Long-lasting Partnerships.” Perhaps the key way we do this is simply by treating our vendors how we’d like to be treated – a rather universal truth yes? Another way is via the “Extranet”
which makes communications with our vendors much easier and accurate. I’ll be attending our Extranet class tomorrow and will report back with what I learned!
