By Amy Wells
If you love fashion and design, and are considering a career or further education in the field, you may want to take a closer look at fashion merchandising. Fashion merchandising combines various aspects of design, marketing, sales, and even accounting skills. If you like moving at a fast pace with a variety of duties, there are many opportunities in the field of fashion merchandising that a college or education program can prepare you for.
A fashion merchandising education involves marketing fashion lines to retail stores, or even working with the stores themselves to market products directly to consumers. Fashion merchandising is a broad field, and can encompass positions such as fashion buying, where you will select merchandise for a retail store, and event coordination, such as fashion shows. Another growing field is visual merchandising, which involves designing the way the actual clothes and products are displayed, such as window displays and floor layouts.
While the fashion industry as a whole is very competitive, there is a lot of growth and opportunity in the merchandising field, because of the wide variety of assignments available. Although clothes may be manufactured all over the world, many of the sales related aspects take place right at home. This is also the type of career that may involved a variety of different job descriptions over the years, so if you crave change and excitement, it could be a good fit.
The best way to get started in fashion merchandising involves related education. A quality fashion merchandising program will be comprehensive and involve a large variety of courses. In addition to design, you will learn other key concepts, such as marketing and advertising. You will also learn how the fashion business works, and how clothing is manufactured and delivered to retail outlets.
There are a number of choices available when choosing a fashion merchandising education. Many colleges offer fashion merchandising as an associate degree, and some that even offer it as a bachelor's program. There are also many schools that embed fashion merchandising within a more traditional marketing degree, which will give you a broader course of study in basic business.
Other options include attending a strictly fashion design school, which will offer merchandising as one of their programs. In addition, you can also study online, as many of these schools will also offer an online or distance education program, as well.
Choosing which type of school to attend will depend partially on your educational goals. Are you looking to make a quick transition into the field, and want a career-oriented education, or do to have a strong basic business and marketing foundation? Most schools will offer internships in fashion, so you can have an opportunity to get your feet wet in the industry. Whatever type of school you choose, you can be assured that you will be learning a great deal about fashion and the fashion industry, and will be preparing for a fast-paced, quickly evolving career in fashion merchandising.