A Day in the Life of a Senior Merchandiser

It all starts with an early start on a Monday to get your head deep into last week's trade reports — working through topline sales numbers and then digging deep into the detail at line-level performance, in preparation for the weekly trade meetings with directors and the management team. A B&M office always has a buzz about it, but you cannot beat the Monday-morning atmosphere (especially when sales are up) and everyone is excitedly sharing news on their department's performance. Once the meetings are completed, it's time to start actioning what has been agreed — speaking to suppliers, repeating or bringing forward any deliveries of best sellers, and working out what to do with those slower sellers, as well as looking ahead to future commitment.

Once Monday is out of the way the week tends to be more fluid: the focus may be on forward strategy meetings for the seasons ahead, or sign-off meetings for the next phase of buys — these involve lots of preparation and collaboration with the buying and design teams. Other weeks will be WSSI weeks, where we reforecast the sales and stock by week, making sure we have just the right amount of stock to maintain the sales without being left with lots of terminal stock that will have to go into markdown at the end of the season. As a Senior Merchandiser you will get involved with projects, looking at best practices and ways of working across the company and departments, whilst managing your department and team of assistant merchandisers and merchandising admin assistants. One thing you can guarantee is that each week will throw up a new challenge, and you need to be able to think quickly and adapt to the changes around you.

The boring answer would be some of the sales growth that I have overseen on my departments. Merchandising is all about maximising your profit potential through a mix of careful planning and taking smart risks, and there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the results from you and your team's hard work come through. The more exciting answer would be when I was lucky enough to project manage the launch of concession ranges in the USA, including one major launch with Mackays. This meant working with several different functions across time zones to ensure we were all working to the same deadlines and end goal; it also meant quite a few trips across the Atlantic, and even one internal flight on a private jet, which was incredible.

Be flexible — this is an ever-changing environment and you have to be ready to adapt; if you don't like change then this probably isn't the job for you. It might be a strange thing for a merchandiser to say, but there will be times when the numbers are absolute and telling you one thing, and if your gut is telling you something else then you have to decide if it is a smart risk and worth going with the gut feeling (nine times out of ten it is!). Outside of that, make sure you know your customer. For most of my career I have worked with products for which I would not be the customer. I see that as an advantage, because personal taste doesn't blinker my judgement — it has meant that to understand that customer I have had to really study their shopping habits and understand what they want. Store visits are fantastic for this if your brand has stores; if it doesn't, think about the competition and get into their stores instead.

I really enjoy cooking, but I know a chef's hours are even worse than a merchandiser's! I love sport and started my career at Lillywhites when it was a proper sports shop — I used to sell anything from tennis balls to croquet sets worth hundreds and hundreds of pounds — so I would love to go back to my roots and have my own sports shop.

Why is this question so hard?! Having borrowed someone else's kitchen knives recently, I now have knife envy, so I want a new set for my kitchen from John Lewis — and whilst I am in there I am sure I will pick up a few gadgets for the kitchen too. I also need more running gear, as I am out regularly at the moment: Nike is my go-to for clothing, with Asics on the feet.