Catwalk to Main Street

Karla, a fashion director for 16 stores in the Midwestern United States, does not have a big budget for travel. She should go to Milan for her one trip to Europe and then New York and Los Angeles for the two destinations in the United States. She should attend the big events and go to New York Fashion Week early September, Milan Fashion Week late September, and Los Angeles Fashion Week in October.

On these trips, Karla can watch the shows and check the trends for the coming season, expand her network, find new opportunities, and make deals with others in the fashion industry who attend fashion week. Gathering information for trend forecasting is vital for Karla’s job. She should subscribe to magazines that suit her young market such as Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Lucky, Seventeen, and Elle Girl. TV should also play a major role in her information gathering on trends. What celebrities wear on popular TV shows usually start huge trends.

On the internet Karla can find fashion blogs, online fashion publications, on line networking sites, and fashion design sites that are easily accessible up to date sources of information for new merchandise and ideas that can keep Karla’s stores very hip and trendy. Employing the use of planogram will help Karla meet the requirements of keeping the stores looking fresh and organized. A planogram is a visual plan of how and when merchandise will be arranged in a retail space (Harris and O’Brien, 1991, p. 65).

This can help Karla arrange the merchandise according to sales trends and variety while keeping the store organized. Karla can use trend merchandising in each of the lifestyle clothing categories by inflating the inventory of the trendiest merchandise in each of the categories and giving the trendiest merchandise the most prominent display spaces within the retail area. Fashion Forecasting 3 References Harris, F. ,O’Brien, L. (1991). Retailing: Shopping, Society, Space. London: David Fulton Publishers.

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