Abstract


Over the years of the growth of merchandising as adiscipline in the export industry, there have been many changes in the jobprofile of the merchandiser. It has changes from a simple to a much morecomplex job transcending almost all departments and functions in an exporthouse. This has led to a change in the skills required for the job andevolution of the discipline of export merchandising.


Article


Merchandising has been to a large extent a function whichwas never clearly defined not distinctly performed in the Indian Apparel exportindustry of old. On one hand the merchandiser had the job of getting orders andhad to execute them; donning the role of production coordinator in the samebreath, whilst for others the job was only follow up of the confirmed orders.


The merchandisers had often been used as glorified clerkswith the job focusing on passing the information received from one source toanother without any 'value addition' to it.


In the burgeoning market of apparel exports 80's, Merchandisingfunction was often assigned to fresh graduated of any discipline who werecapable of responding to the queries of the customers in the English language.No other qualification was largely sought from them as the work was primarilydecentralized and the merchants needed little technical knowledge. But thedependency on the technicians was inevitable.



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About the Author


The author is Associate Professor, Centre Coordinator, Departmentof Fashion Technology, National Institute of Fashion Technology, Chennai.


Reference:

 

Diplomaproject of Namit Nigam and Vineet Kumar Choubey; Sem IV students- NIFT, Chennai2004 under the guidance of the Author.