I interviewed Nicole at Torrid about her daily store operation as a store manager. I asked her 15 question about running a fashion retail business and she provided me with best way to service and run as successful business. The first question I asked was. Who are you main competitors and why? Major department store and Layne Bryant due to them having a pleather of plus size. But we don’t have a lot of true competitors as of right now. Some of the stores like Styles for less, Forever 21 the cheap stores are starting to get plus sizes but it’s still kind of slim pickings. What is the most important decision you make every day as a store manager? The most important decisions I make is how to better help my customer …show more content…
I would say shipment processing and because in most small businesses you have to multi task. You have to help your customers at the same time while getting out the freight on the floor. The freight has to be out within 24 hours because without that fright out on the floor. we would be losing out on sales while products are just stacking in the back. This is the most impact. What strategies do you prefer for motivating your employees? We do a lot of contest and just finding out what their strengths are and rewarding them for it. Maybe having them be a leader for an area and teaching the rest of the staff why they do what they do so well. We also give them a shot out and we have a lot of contest with rewards. What is the conversion rate of walk-ins. Right now, this is the first store that I have ever has a conversion rate so it’s new to me. We average 29% and companywide it about 33%. What technology do you use to prevent shrinkage? We use following policy and procedure and making sure what needs to be censored is censored. But above most you have to a good staff because a censored only does so much. It is the people that will help you prevents …show more content…
Usually it is a few hours after we open and a few hours right before we get ready to close. Now during the week, it is during rush hour time because people don’t want to sit in traffic so they shop in-between 4pm-7. What would you say your peak seasons are throughout the year? I would say back to school and just for the whole mall in general it would be for the holiday seasons too. But for us we do have some coupon events that go on and when we have our coupon redemption which is busier than Christmas sometimes. How often do you hold sales events? We have a in store promotion on something weekly like now we have buy one and get the other half off the entire store. Then every 2-3 months we do the big coupons. How long is the item on the floor before you do markdowns. We leave them on the floor for 30 days then we start the mark downs to make way for new product. How do you stay updated on current trends? I follow fashion blogs, Instagram, seeing what’s going on in the music industry because they usually stay ahead of the curves. I also I look at the competitors even though we are a plus size store. Plus, size girls want to look the same just as everyone else. So, you have to shop the mall and see what everyone else is