June 26, 2011

We came in on Sunday to continue to prepare for the corporate visit for South Park.  We were joined by the Raleigh interns, Carter and Allison. Collin and I worked on straightening the Havana area. Collin made sure there were size runs in the hanging merchandise, and organized the Havana interlock. Meanwhile, I worked on paper-folding all of the knits on the Havana concept table. After I made sure the concept table looked perfect, I touched up the Wimbledon table which was displayed in the aisle. A few days before, I had fancy-folded the big player mesh for the Wimbledon Collection.  Carter and Allison worked on organizing the denim table, keeping the BSR denim and fashion denim sized correctly.  Afterwards, we worked in the casual area, making sure that everything was organized and straight.  After lunch, we worked on arranging the shorts, so that the pleated shorts were below the flat-fronts.  We then worked in the sale section and Collin updated some of the mannequins.

---Meredith Pugh

June 24, 2011

On Friday we met at South Park Mall to get the Polo shop visit ready. Tony and Collin rearranged fixtures in the sale and casual areas. I worked with Avanel on moving the $49.99 mesh out of the mesh wall and onto the P200 fixture.  We then went to the stock room and pulled all the extra regular-priced mesh out.  We also took out the back stock from the left side of the mesh wall and combined it with the mesh from the stock room in order to fill the right side of the wall. After Avanel and I had pulled enough merchandise to fill the entire wall, we began arranging it using the color block method. However, it was very difficult to not use the same color mesh in the same row and column because there were only so many regular price colors. Afterwards, Collin and I took all the tissue pants and placed them on a different shelf. We made sure to neatly organize the pants by size.  Tony then showed Collin and I where he kept all the props in the stock room. He told us to pick out props that we thought would complement the Havana section, while he arranged props to go in golf.  When we returned from lunch, we went to the stock room to tear off the prices on the hang tags of BSR hats, tees, custom fit mesh, and pants. By doing so, we were saving Avanel a step in preparing for the mark ups for Monday.  We ended by pulling the prices tags off the BSR denim which was out on the floor. We left out the tags so that Avanel could easily price them when she came around to it.

---Meredith Pugh

June 23, 2011

On Thursday, I began the day by filling in Havana merchandise, making sure that there were complete size runs in the Havana room.  We also spent some time in the sales area; we wanted to make sure that everything was consolidated. For the visit, it was important to have ample walking space between the fixtures.  Therefore, we had to eliminate a couple of sale fixtures. Collin and I also worked on the golf display.  Collin worked on the mannequins while I paper folded the table. When Collin and I returned from lunch, we helped Tony with the dress shirt area. Collin scanned the dress shirts to see which ones were marked sale, and I worked on rearranging the dress shirts by the aisle. I took out some of the dress shirts from the aisle display and placed them in one of the clear dress shirt fixtures, containing BSR dress shirts. Collin and I worked on consolidating dress shirts onto two of the clear dress shirt fixtures. We were able to take away one of the fixtures which created a lot more room. It also made the fixtures look like they had a lot of merchandise. Tony showed us how to stack the dress shirts properly.  We ended by arranging ties on the dress shirts.

---Meredith Pugh

Wednesday 6/29/2011

This is our last day so Meredith and I arrived at South park at 10 a.m. We started out helping Tony move a more stock to the clearance rounders and replenish any stock that had went down. We only stayed a short time and Tony took Meredith and I to get Starbucks and talk about the whole experience and make sure we were clear on all of the final numbers. After we were let go for the day Meredith and I walked around Belk looking for people to take our survey and making sure we had a good range of ages. This whole experience was very good and insightful for me; I thoroughly enjoyed it and am sad to be leaving.

Collin Allison

North Carolina State University

Fashion and Apparel Management

Brand Management and Marketing

Tuesday 6/28/2011

Today was the big day of the visit. We had to be at the store early at 8:00 a.m. and make sure everything was touched up and absolutely perfect for the visit. The corporate visitors arrived around 9:15 a.m. we were introduced and then began the walk through. We started out looking at the Havana section, the visitors from corporate were very interested in the numbers and Tony went over all of the business reports and informed them on what had been selling and what hadn’t.  We walked through sportswear and talked with the corporate visitors, it was very enlightening hearing them go over the in’s and out’s of the business and what should be done differently to increase the productivity of the store. After sportswear they wanted to see the New Big & Tall section. The main problem that seemed to be reoccurring was the sizing problem, in which all of the popular sizes get sold out of very quickly and there is no back stock to replace them. The visit was very insightful and exciting, and it was good to see what we had been building up too for the past week.

Collin Allison

North Carolina State University

Fashion and Apparel Management

Brand Management and Marketing

Monday 6/27/2011

Today the two other interns from Raleigh were once again working with Meredith and I, though we were focused on getting the floor at Pineville set because there is a chance that the corporate team may also walk through that store. We started out moving around fixtures to get them in the right spot and make sure the whole store was spread out and in order. Then Carter and I worked on the front denim table to get it set and in order according to the directive. After that Meredith and I worked on the back shorts wall, as we switched out plastic hangers to the Polo Ralph Lauren wooden hangers and moved the shorts around. After lunch we made sure all of the walls were set, I got up on the latter to work on the highest shelves. After we finished with the sportswear section we moved over to big and tall and made sure it as set. Tony and I moved the tables around because they were crowded and blocking the back wall. We made sure the Havana concept table us up front and center and set right.

Collin Allison

North Carolina State University

Fashion and Apparel Management

Brand Management and Marketing

Sunday 6/26/2011

Today we came in on Sunday to South Park to make final preparations on the floor for the visit. Two other interns from Raleigh were there to help us also. Meredith and I started out in the Havana section making sure everything on the concept table and fixtures surrounding it were perfect and set up just as they were in the directory. After we were finished with that we went to the full price section at the front left corner of the store, I made sure the bleecker short table that I had set up a couple days earlier was set right and replenished. After Lunch we continued to make sure the store was perfect, we worked on the sale section and I made a couple mannequins to make sure they were the new full price merchandise.

Collin Allison

North Carolina State University

Fashion and Apparel Management

Brand Management and Marketing