I guess I'll talk a bit about my story. Gail's History. Way back in the day..after graduating from MCC (marketing) and RIT (fashion merchandising) I was hired by McCurdy & Co. A nice family owned department store. After some training I was assigned as an assistant to the Sleepwear and Robes buyer. Great lady. Don't know if you can name drop in blogs without permission so we'll leave it at that. Then I went to Women's Sportswear in the same capacity. Another great boss! Next I was promoted to Intimate Apparel, sleepwear and robes! What a great job! All jobs have their moments and this one was no exception but it was mostly wonderful. Why else would I work for a mere pittance? I got to travel to NYC 5 times a year, go to showrooms, meet great people, go to great parties, wined and dined by reps and all on the company's dime! I even met Nadia Comaneci and Bart Conners! The true best part about the job though was how independent we all were with our areas. We truly made most of our decisions by ourselves...we ran our own "little business" within a business. At this point in time we had 7 branches. Then we acquired another family owned store in the southern tier and added 3 stores to our original 7. Shortly after this I was "promoted" (not sure it really was a promotion...) to a larger, more diverse and more complex area: Women's Hosiery and Accessories. Whooboy. Doesn't sound like much, right? But it included: hosiery, socks, exercise gear, hats, scarves, sunglasses, knitwear, slippers, women's gloves, belts, ponchos and other oddities like dickies. McCurdy's was hitting a roadblock as so many stores were in the early 90's so they started to shift things around. McCurdy's owned our "sister" store, B.Forman's. Forman's catered to a totally different clientele. High end merchandise. Designer clothing. All different vendors and price points from what McCurdy's sold. Around this time we were told we were combining buying responsibilities for both stores...we would keep our areas but buy at both the lower price points that McCurdy's catered to and the higher price points of Forman's all while maintaining both stores autonomy in the public eye. Hmm. What do you think happened? Can you say "YUCK"? Yep....it wasn't fun anymore. Now we were 13 stores with twice as many vendor reps to deal with and all new systems to work in as well as moving management around to supervise the new areas. It was difficult. We were going down. Unfortunately McCurdy's was acquired by the Bon Ton in July of 1994. Since my husband's work was our anchor, I didn't bother interviewing as we would have to move and that wasn't happening. So... Time to stay home with my 2 children. Two years later, we had a third child and I was entrenched in motherhood. Those little ones are now almost all young adults so it's time to venture back out in the water for a swim...
End of Part #1.
If you're interested in Real Estate and would like to be on my buyer's list go to: http://www.got2moveon.com/ and sign up! If you want to send an e-mail go to: gailsmith001@gmail.com .
If you're interested in Real Estate and would like to be on my buyer's list go to: http://www.got2moveon.com/ and sign up! If you want to send an e-mail go to: gailsmith001@gmail.com .
