As the second market week comes to a close, I have been able to meet with a hand full of vendors and really see how the product is envisioned and adapted to fit our end consumer. After working with women’s apparel for my first two weeks here and then visiting vendors of our handbag and scarf divisions it was great to see the inspiration for the season shine through in every piece. There is great foreseen synergy among the product categories, which through these meetings I have found is not always the easiest accomplishment. I find thinking a year in advance is strange at times. Sitting in these meetings, viewing spring product, I have to remind myself that this is for spring 2010, not product available currently. It’s great to see how current trends are adapting and taking on new looks for next year.

I have also been keeping busy within my department as we have our final adaptation meeting in a week. After last weeks’ prototype review all changes need to be made to garments so there are products that are ready to buy. Since, I don’t take part in all those meetings I am excited to attend the final adaptation meeting to view these changes and the impact they will have on the price, store layout, and overall message for the season.

On Tuesday, I worked on taking pictures of new product for a Bass newsletter that will be sent out to the entire division. I dressed the mannequins and worked to take pictures that would showcase the trends that were the focal point of that season’s styles. This allowed me to show my creativity, attentiveness to detail, and organizational skills by completing this project with proper items featured and teamed with items I thought appropriate.

On Thursday, I had the task of calling different Bass stores to check that managers had re-ticketed two SKU’s that had a changed retail price. If these corrections weren’t made Bass would be losing money as the retail price increased from the original. This task allowed me to show my professional skills as well as interpersonal skills via the phone. We also prepped Thursday night for a fall review meeting that will be held on Friday. The president of Bass would like to review the fall product to be familiar with products that will be hitting the stores shortly, since we have been working on spring so heavily lately.

With reference to the MBA program, I have been working on my own time this week to complete the company analysis, which is due on Monday. (The train commute has proven very useful for getting additional work done, along with those early morning snoozes!) This analysis has allowed me to take a deeper look at PVH as a corporation and learn about their mission, as it has adapted from year to year with the ever changing consumer and the economy they live in. Overall, it was a great week as the tasks I was given were differentiated from one another. I was able to correlate one project to a previous making things come full circle. As for now, I am now looking forward to seeing the changes made to spring 2010 for the final adoption meeting next week.