3. Merchandising Department

As we know there are so many BIA factories spread all over the country. The merchandising processes of all these factories are done by the merchandising office situated in Walisara.
This BIAW merchandising department is divided into factory wise then once again these are divided according to the buyer wise. Here in my report I have taken all details and the examples relevant to the EI account of the BIAK factory and it handles the buyer Express.
The merchandising department is the starting point of the factory’s production system and it’s known as the front end of the factory. The merchandizing department has to involve with all the departments in the factory along with their operations and this department also can be described as operation center of the factory. (BIAK factory is situated in Katunayake and the merchandising department of BIAK is situated in Walisara. So the BIAK has communicate with their merchandising team over the telephone and e-mails)
Actually the merchandising is a process with, planning, developing, costing and presenting their product to the buyer. So this merchandising department of the BIAK is divided into three teams to perform their tasks very easier.

These three sub teams are

1.  Marketing team      
2. Developing team
3. Procurement team

The responsibilities of merchandisers:-

• Product Developing 
• Inquiring for PO from venders
• Raw Material purchasing 
• Market and product 
• Analyzing
• Booking space for orders
• Sampling
• Costing

3.1 The marketing Team

Marketing team is to deal with the buyer and for negotiating about new order placement. The marketing merchandiser is the first person who gets all details about the new order from buyer. Then he receives technical pack with the BOM, from the buyer and they should sent copies for other teams for further process.
Merchandisers have to negotiate with the buyers on pricing, work out delivery schedules, and investigate for future buyers.

3.1.1 Garment order inquiry

           This is the place where the buyer and the factory merchandiser discuss about the order and its delivering schedule. The factory is a vendor and the buyer is inquiring from many vendors around the world until he comes to his satisfaction.
             The object of this inquiring is to identify what is the ability of the factory and identify of the factory capacity to meet this order in time.
               When the factory is asked for an enquiry from a buyer, factory should present their time schedule by describing the way that, how they hope to meet this order. This schedule should be send to the buyer and this is very important for the order confirmation. This plan is name as “Time and Action Plan” (T&A)