As Fashion Merchandiser

How to Draw Strategy from a Comparison Shopping Report Milliards Mini-Case As an FM student you bring in al filey done lots of shopping reports. This exercise is intended to show you how to drop this information as an analytical tool. Comparative shopping Is done In the Industry constantly. But the stopover of the task Is to Identify strengths and weaknesses of your introduces merchandise mix In comparison to the competitors. Are you offering the customer something funny in one segment of your business, just non in others? Are you Just a measly second in comparison too throng competitor?Are you under- or over-developed in authorized classifications? Are your prices in line with the rest of your store? In relation to your competition? Are on that point business opportunities that no one has addressed yet (market voids)? In this exercise, you are the buyer for Milliards Department Stores mens Sport Shirt Department. Your boss has asked you to do a comparison shopping analysi s in assemble to determine ways to adjust your assortments to improve sales and profits. Milliards Is a mostly moderate department store with some business done at bust price points as well.Womens, Mens, and Kids are all carried, along with all the usual Home Store categories. Within Womens, both Misses and Womens (Plus size) are carried. The store is predominantly branded, but there is some private label merchandise carried within the departments. For 201 3 Private label has non been as profitable as Branded merchandise and the buyer of Mens sport shirts is seeing a trend toward labels Note This Is a self-contained case study. Mallards Is a fictitious store. Therefore, you must Limit yourself to reading In this write-up only. Work on the skill of writing with specificity.Dont answer competitor-by- competitor give one opinion that takes all competitors into consideration) b. Why are these segments at a competitive advantage? C. Which components are not at a competitive advantag e? D. Why not? Third Step After finishing your study, you read in the paper that Thomas & Blake is going out of business Even though they continued to have decent revenues, their debt load finally did them in. They could no longer afford to keep the stores open. 3. A. Does this change provide an environmental opportunity for you? . Does the issue of branded vs.. Private label enter into this consideration? Why or why not? C. How ability you adjust the assortments in your department to pounce on the misfortunes at Thomas & Blake? Be real specific. A. Yes, When Thomas & Blake goes out of business, that gives you an opportunity to take over Thomas & Flakes market share with the right marketing strategy. B. Maybe , because Thomas & Blake is a typical department store that doesnt have over Thomas & Flakes customer. They might want to consider private label. C.Compare to Thomas & Flakes shopping analysis. Milliards needs make the price range of the better regular classification a bit h igher from $80 to $120. Also, the price range of the better fine-looking/Tall classification need to be adjusted higher from $50 to $90 in baseball club to meet the need of the customers who used to shop at Thomas & Blake. D. Fourth Step Of course, nothing stands smooth in the world of retailing. Just as you start to celebrate the loss of a key competitor, some other news item hits the local paper Wall-Mart is coming to town Ouch