Garments Merchandising | Merchandiser and their activities in The Garments Industry and Buying House

Merchandising is an English word, which actually comes from the word merchandise. Merchandise means products and goods are bought and sold to the customer. The person who does this work calls a merchandiser.

But according to the textile business, Merchandising means to receive an order from the buyer, sourcing all required raw materials, execute the order from sample to final product, confirm order shipment to the buyer, and collect the price of the product from the buyer.

From the above definition, we get an idea about merchandiser and merchandising. Now I discuss details about merchandising in this article.

Merchandiser works like a bridge between buyers and manufacturers. Buyer placed an order to the merchandiser and merchandiser shift order to the factory or manufacturer.

For that kind of reason merchandising calls the heart of the textile industry.

Due to the different activities of the merchandising process, we find three types of merchandising in the textile sector. These are :

1. Production Merchandising
2. Buying house Merchandising
3. Visual Merchandising

Garments Merchandising ( Freepik )

1. Production Merchandising: Production merchandising is related to the factory merchandising. Here all the merchandising work is connected to the garments production. In industry, there is plenty number of work handled by the merchandiser and everybody do different types of work. But they work in a group or team. They work like,

• Marketing Merchandising: The leader of the merchandising group work as a Marketing Merchandiser. They communicate with the buyer, fixed a date for a meeting, costing of the product, negotiating the product price and finally get an order by impressed buyer about their price and quality of the product. They also work with Buying House.
• Planning Merchandising: After receiving an order another member of the team ready a Time & action sheet. In the T&A sheet, All the production work and shipment time is clearly mentioned. Here they ensure when raw material in-house, bulk production starts, Final inspection time etc.
• Sourcing Merchandising: Here all the merchandiser work for collecting different material like Trims & Accessories, Yarn and fabric, Dyes & chemical, lab testing etc.
• Sample developing merchandising: Here junior merchandiser work to follow up the sample development. He ensures senior merchandiser that sample is produced with care and according to the buyer PO sheet.
• Product developing merchandising: Product development merchandiser work to ensure the production process and product quality.  They follow up whole the production process to make sure garments are made according to the buyer instruction.

2. Buying house Merchandising: "Buying House", if you just think 5 - 10 seconds about these two words, you get the proper meaning of the Buying House. Yes! Its meaning is to buy something from this place or selling something to the customer (Buyer). 

Buying House is the third party those are received an order from the buyer and selling garments to them (Buyer). But they don't produce garments and any kind of product. Here they work as a media between the buyer and the manufacturer. 

Basically, they ( Buying House ) placed the order to the local manufacturer those are able to make export quality garments. The buying house has some group of merchandiser who maintains all the process of the order. Merchandiser of the buying house works differently like production or factory merchandiser. They work like,

• Costing: First, they calculate the cost of the garments with their profit. Then it offers to the buyer. If the buyer is agreed with the price they place the order. 
• Sourcing manufacturer: After receiving the order, buying house merchandiser sourcing a manufacturer to produce garments. Here, they offer a slightly reduced price for manufacturing the garments.
• Visiting industry:  Merchandiser visits the manufacturing industry to follow the production process and inform to the buying house up to date product information.

There is also some work that buying house merchandiser doing like sample send and approval, arrange final inspection etc. 

3. Visual merchandising: Visual merchandising is a type of merchandising where a merchandiser works as an interior designer. They decorate completely the retailer shop or the buying house. They represent different eye-catching garments item in front of the showroom to show the customer. Here Visual merchandiser has a goal and these are maximizing the sell. Sometimes they decorate the brand showroom for the summer sale, the spring sale, Christmas sale etc occasionally holidays. 

You can see there are some common activities have in these three merchandising. The activities include-

• They work very nearly with buyers, manufacturer as well as the customer.
• They monitoring market trend.
• Calculating product price or costing.
• Sourcing right raw materials for production.
• Ensure product quality.
• Make time and action sheet.
• Product process follow-up.
• Open L/C.
• Preparing custom clearance.
• Sample development.
• Organizing final inspection and shipment process.
• Decorating factory merchandising office, buying house and brand showroom.
• Ensure shipment.

Actually, merchandiser is the responsible person and merchandising is the responsible department for order receive to shipment process without any problem. They always busy to maintain buyer, manufacturer, production process, export documentation ready etc. hundreds of works. So it is a tough job for a merchandiser to maintain all of these.


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