Intern Ideas: An Interactive Organization

Leader/Follower Relationships (Week 1):

My greatest takeaway from my first week of interning at Bloomingdale’s is how interactive the culture is between different careers/teams and different levels of seniority. My internship is divided into three different departments: buying, planning and store management. Beyond the internship, I have already interacted with other departments including human resources, learning and development, the fashion office, sales associates, marketing and the finance office. This summer I am interning in the buying department which is further divided based on area of focus and on roles. I was assigned to the ready to wear department (modern and contemporary collections) which is responsible for the buying and allocation of women’s clothing. Other departments include home, jewelry, men and childrens.

Within the RTW team that I was assigned to there is a division of leadership. At the top of my team there is a General Merchandise Manager for ready to wear who is new to Bloomingdale’s. Her direct report is my “people manager” who is a buyer. She is responsible for maintaining relationships with vendors and placing the orders for ready to wear in all 38 stores along with .COM. Below the buyer is the senior assistant buyer who assists the buyer in placing orders using the infinity order system and the ROF which is Bloomingdale’s rolling operating forecast. Below the senior assistant buyer is the assistant buyer who reports to the senior assistant buyer in scheduling vendor appointments and taking notes and pictures during market meetings. The RTW buying team works directly and consistently with a RTW planning team.

In just this first week I was able to go to two market meetings. Market meetings are the epitome of buying and they take place for 1-2 weeks each quarter. The retail calendar is based on a 4-5-4 fiscal calendar which is designed so that each period has the same number of weekends. The calendar has 2 seasons and 4 quarters. Each quarter is 3 months and when the buying team goes to market they are previewing merchandise for the 3 months. At these market appointments the buying team selects the merchandise and places the order for the quantity and the locations. It was extremely interesting to see the strategy that was utilized to determine which stores would receive what and how much based on existing data. Also, the GMM and the buying team were extremely interactive and each person on the team had their structured and independent responsibilities.

Not only are the teams and departments interactive within but they are interactive with executives and higher positions of leadership. The set up of the office (open with cubicles and few offices) is extremely interactive and equitable. The buying/planning/store management teams meet with the executives weekly to give them direct reports and information. Additionally, this week I gave a 10 minute competitive shopping presentation to leadership in the learning and development team as we will be completing a semester long project. I was assigned to the project that is tackling Bloomingdale’s move from their current offices in Manhattan to a brand new office slightly outside of the city. At the end of the summer I will be presenting my teams suggestions to 100+ stakeholders, including the CEO of Bloomingdale’s. In the past the stakeholders and leaderships have utilized the ideas of many of the interns. In my opinion, the new office will promote even greater cross-functional interaction.

Overall, the leader-follower dynamic is incredibly interactive. It is so important that the teams all interact (buying, planning, store-management, fashion office, leadership) because they need to portray a consistent image to their customer in all aspects. Additionally, the leadership within the team is pretty autonomous because Bloomingdale’s (under Macy’s Inc) has an extensive training program (executive development program) and standardized procedures because of the softwares. However, each team is very personalized based on their own culture. Lastly, even the leadership of executives is top-down because they truly do value their employees’ opinions/ideas which I have seen already through the final project and a board meeting that I will be attending this week.