Claireís, the fashion accessories retailer, is pleased to announce that it has significantly expanded its Birmingham based Buying & Merchandising Team, providing an essential platform for delivering both aggressive expansion plans across Europe, as well as ensuring it remains focused on its strategy for becoming recognised as a trend-setting retailer, not a trend follower.
Claireís planned growth will see the retailerís European presence nearly doubling in size over the next three to five years and this team will rapidly see significant changes including moving to buying for 10 countries instead of four.
To build this expanded team an extensive recruitment programme, including the award winning Boa Selector and Thousand of Lines advertising campaigns, was designed to search for talented buyers and merchandisers.
Melanie Berry, European General Merchandise Manager, will lead the buying team in its drive to set trends in the European accessories market, building a reputation for Claireís as a fashion haven full of up-to-the-minute fashion products.
Melanie comments: ìTo have this team based in Birmingham working across Europe will allow us to react much faster and more efficiently to emerging country trends and markets. The team will have complete responsibility and accountability for the current c1,000 Claireís stores across 10 European countries. With a stated ambition of expanding across Europe this is a fantastic opportunity for the team who will be dealing with upwards of 10,000 products at any one time.î
Following Apollo Managementís acquisition of Claireís in May 2007 there has been a significant expansion to the Birmingham-based team and the European Managing Directorís vision, Mark Smith, on joining Claireís last year was to invest in the Buying & Merchandising team in order to promote Claireís as a trend setting business, reflecting Europeís influence on the worldwide fashion market.
Mark comments: ìThe accessories market across Europe has experienced a high level of growth and it is important that Claireís leads from the front as the pioneer in this market by setting, not following the trends.î
Claire's expands buying and merchandising team for Europe
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