Sales and Merchandise Manager - Boots
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August 1999 to January 2000
In August 1999 I moved to the Bluewater branch of Boots the Chemists as Sales and Merchandise Manager for Beauty and Personal Care. Bluewater is one of the largest Boots stores and is used to trial new retail concepts before they are rolled out to the full chain.
In this role I was part of the store management team and was personally responsible for a sales floor with average weekly takings of £130,000. I directly managed four supervisors and a wider team of over 35 sales staff during the four months before Christmas. I was responsible for managing the sales team and other store teams to ensure that daily and weekly sales targets were achieved.
I also took responsibility for overall planning of the Christmas 1999 trading. This included staff recruitment, merchandising, and local marketing. As a part of this work I developed and implemented a Beauty Showcase event in conjunction with other Bluewater retailers.
This role gave me a good insight into how a retail store operates and how customers select and buy products. I also gained a good understanding of the principles of merchandising which have been useful in subsequent roles where I have adapted these principles for application in online sales environments.
