Buyer

 After about a year working in Books and Candy at Belk in Columbia Mall, my supervisor announced she was going to retire.  She was also the store's buyer for much of the Home Store.  She asked me if I would be interested in her position, and I said yes.  It would be more money than my minimum wage job, and there would be more prestige.  She recommended me to upper management, and I was named the new buyer for Home.
 My departments were:  Bedding, Bath, Window Treatments, Rugs, Housewares, Small Electrics, Luggage, Toys, Stationery, Greeting Cards, Records, Candy, Christmas, Notions and Books.  A daunting task at best.  I had to buy merchandise for all of these departments plus supervising all of the employees.  And, it wasn't just the Columbia Mall store.  It was also the Belk Downtown store.
 I realized quite quickly that this job was going to be far more impossible than I thought.  I didn't know what a "duvet" was, much less a "sham".  As far as the Bed and Bath areas, I had to depend on the sales people to guide me through it.  I had a little more knowledge of the other areas, and I had "bought" Luggage for Belk, when I worked in the downtown store, so I knew about that.  I also knew something about Stationery, Greeting Cards, Books and Candy.  However, I was drowning in the paperwork.  I went to our merchandise manager, who became my retail mentor, and I told him how much trouble I was having.  He hired a woman to come in and be the buyer for Bed, Bath, Window Treatments, and Rugs.  That was a huge weight taken off of me.
 I started with the rest of the departments and found that I had some of the best employees to supervise.  I had one girl whose main job was to remember what I did the day before.  With 11 departments to buy for, I often forgot one day to the next what I had done.  She was my invaluable assistant.  I also had employees who cared about the business.  I would get samples from vendors of things, mostly in Housewares.  I didn't cook, so I had no use for skillets or cake pans.  So, I would use them as sales awards for my people.  They loved it.  I would get them presents on their birthdays and just treat them as people.  I found the more I did for them, the more they did for me.  Consequently, I had the lowest turnover ratio in the store.  The store's average was 3 months.  Mine was 2 years.
 I also had our merchandise manager show me how to buy effectively and read reports.  He also told me that I would not be fired for a year of buying, because I was working off of my predecessor's numbers.  They sent me to buying school in Charlotte for a week of training.  There were about 50 people in the class from all over the company.  On the first day, the facilitator went around the room to ask how was business to each buyer.  Almost everyone said business was great.  When he asked how did they know, the stock answer was that their manager told them it was and for them to say that in the class.  When he came to me and a buyer from Savannah, we both said business was okay but could be better.  He asked us how did we know, and we told him that was what our reports said.  The two of us were far ahead and the others, and the facilitator used us to teach the class.
 One of the faults of the previous Housewares buyer at our store was she bought too much Pfaltzgraff 5-piece place settings.  In fact, we had over 100 of them, and they were stacked to the ceiling in the stockroom.  I called Pfaltzgraff to see if they would take them off of our hands, but they said no. They wouldn't let me move them to clearance, because they were very protective of their prices, so I called up a friend at J. B. White's Department Store who was their Housewares buyer.  He sold them to him at cost, and they took them.  It was a win-win for both of us.  One thing I tried to do was to make relationships with other stores in the area.  We would refer customers to them, and in turn they would do the same for us.  Belk wasn't very pleased in that relationship, but it worked.
 More Buyer stories coming soon.