Working at Essential - The Conclusion

Working at Essential has been productive, engaging and thoroughly enjoyable. I feel that I have grown in my creative abilities, having to think outside the box and use my intuition to solve daily problems. From visual merchandising to customer service, the experience at Essential has equalled my previous knowledge on fashion retail from working in other stores in Bournemouth and having read literature and reported on the subject, I feel that I am well equipped for higher roles in the industry in future.

Ring Sizing

New rings or rings without tags need to be sized on the ring sizer which measures the interior diameter in alphabetical order from small to large. Once the ring has been sized, a sticker is attached with the size letter, the product code and the price and it is placed in size order on the ring boards. As there are so many rings, this procedure is done to maintain tidiness and organisation. 

Bay Moving

'Bay moving' is done every few weeks in order to refresh the layout of the costume jewellery bays. As Essential is notorious for the organised colour-blocking layout, the costume jewellery bays have to always be precise, neat and enjoyable to view and shop. refreshing the layout of stock in general, helps to maintain interest in old merchandise while displaying new stock at the forefront to sell as much as possible. In these images, my colleague Chloe and I were shifting around the purple coloured bay. 

Replenishing

Replenishing stock is very important in order to draw customer attention to new products. For the scarves, I created a new replenishing system; whereby the scarves are organised into colours in separate boxes in the stockroom and each time the scarves are replenished, the date has to be written on the box.

Silver Duty

As the silver department is generally the most profitable area, it has to be kept clean and tidy to attract custom. 'Silver Tweaking' is when the jewellery is cleaned using a silver cloth, rearranged if cluttered or misplaced, and labels are reattached if missing. 

Silver Tweaking may take time and careful attendance, but staff must remain attentive and be welcoming to customers at all times, maintaining a bright smile at all times. 

Essential Visual Merchandising (Scarves and Accessories)

The abundance of scarves and the new influx of bags instore, meant that display was limited, and so i was allocated to sort out the problem by rearranging and organising the accessories to make them look as spaced out, colour blocked and shoppable as possible.

Essential Visual Merchandising (Fossil Watches)

  
As the opportunity arose for me to take on more visual merchandising work, so I decided to move on with the times and rearrange the Fossil brand mens and womens watches around to make them pop and capture the customer's attention. Through using different heights, creating variations of depth and layers, this display draws the eye in an exciting sweep around the cabinet and makes the product look more appealing. Like with the Pasha jewelry, I tried to be as creative as possible and use a few objects and props to give the individual and artistic edge. 

Essential Visual Merchandising (Pasha Silver Collection)

Essential is a fresh and vibrant jewellery shop in Bournemouth centre, offering a range of unique silver and semi precious gem jewellery, along with a wide array of dazzling costume jewellery, bags, scarves and other accessories.

I chose to do a work placement with this business because I wanted to research into the retail sector of the fashion and accessories industry from a hands-on work experience perspective, as a retail assistant.

This unique brand of silver plated jewellery was hidden and not shown off to its best potential, so I decided to revamp the layout. I ripped, tore and glued fabric and shiny paper, rummaged for odd boxes, wall hanging squares and a disused shelf and finally pieced together a wow-factor display.

Since I revamped the display, half the collection has been sold and has constant interest by customers. 

About Essential Jewellers

The company was started 1990 by Clare Andrew and grew from a small jewellery business in Southampton offering a range of affordable silver/semi-precious stone and costume jewellery, along with a selection of scarves and fashion accessories.

This strong colour blocking system became essential’s unique selling point and the company survived the recession of the early 90’s; growing into an eight-store business with stores opening in Guildford, Bournemouth and around Southern England and Cardiff.

Currently, Essential operates both online and in-store. In-store, the high level of customer service along with the attention to tidiness and organisation creates a friendly and inviting shopping experience, which the business initially grew from, thus establishing a strong loyal customer base. Essential online offers ease of navigation through a wide variety of jewellery and accessories that are also displayed in-store.