If you are looking for a job in retail, one of the most popular roles you will encounter is the Visual Merchandiser. Many fashion enthusiasts start their career in retail as a side job during their studies or as recent graduates, taking on roles as sales showroom assistants, where they get their first exposure to visual merchandising. This may also be your first job in fashion if you are just starting. Or you might be looking for the perfect role that blends creativity with strategy; Visual Merchandising is one of those. So today, we want to introduce you to a career in Visual Merchandising. We will cover everything from the essence of the role and job responsibilities to the skills and best studies to how to start.
The Role of the Visual Merchandiser
The Visual Merchandiser (VM) is the person who works in a store, implementing and maintaining all the brand’s visual directives and standards for interior merchandising, windows, and in-store special events that follow guidelines sent by the company, injecting the brand’s image into the boutique.
Do not mistake this role with the Fashion Merchandiser one. A Visual Merchandiser focuses solely on creating and maintaining the visual directives within a store from window displays to store layouts, while a fashion merchandiser participates in developing the collection (Collection Merchandiser) and/or deciding which items will end up in stores (Retail Merchandiser).
Visual Merchandisers mainly work at physical stores. They can work at a mono-brand store (a luxury brand, retailer, or independent designer) or work as freelancers for multiple brands and stores.
Whether working for a luxury brand, a fast-fashion retailer, or an independent boutique, visual merchandisers play a crucial role in shaping the way consumers interact with fashion. However, with the rise of experiential retail and digital shopping, fashion visual merchandising is also evolving.
The Future of Visual Merchandising
Nowadays, you can find more and more job openings for online Visual Merchandisers or E-commerce Managers or Fashion Merchandisers, whose tasks sometimes include Visual Merchandising, aka managing the product display and arrangement online. Nowadays and in the future, Visual Merchandisers who can blend traditional in-store merchandising with digital and omnichannel strategies will have a competitive edge. Moreover, it’s a fantastic option for a career start, as there may be more opportunities in the digital area (which can often be remote), especially if there aren’t many physical fashion stores where you live.
Blending Creativity with Commerce
Fashion visual merchandising is a dynamic and creative career that blends artistic expression with commercial impact, making it an essential part of the fashion industry. Indeed, behind nice window displays and store layouts lies a strategic approach to combining design with marketing and consumer psychology to enhance the shopping experience, drive sales, and strengthen brand identity.
More than just arranging products, the Visual Merchandiser builds storytelling—creating environments that not only showcase merchandise but also evoke emotions, engage customers, and ultimately drive sales.
Recall any of your shopping experiences at a physical store. As you stepped inside the store, the attractive interior design and product arrangement were probably not the only things you noticed. There was something logical and cohesive about it, didn’t it? Well, the Visual Merchandiser is behind this.
The products inside the store are not arranged randomly but follow a strategic choice to create not only a visually pleasant experience but also a clear customer flow through fixture placement and navigation in line with the brand’s standards. Visual Merchandisers thus act as storytellers, marketers, and commercial people at once, executing the floor moves in a way that creates clear stories and wearable buying suggestions.
So if so far you’ve overlooked a career in Visual Merchandising, thinking that this role is only about dressing mannequins and touching products every day, now you know that it is much richer and more interesting than that.
What does a Visual Merchandiser do?
A career in fashion visual merchandising involves various responsibilities, including:
- Store Layout Design: Arranging store interiors or e-commerce to create an attractive and harmonious presence and optimize space.
- Product Presentation: Ensuring merchandise is displayed in an aesthetically pleasing, organized, and accessible manner.
- Window Displays: Crafting eye-catching window displays that attract customers and reflect the brand’s aesthetic, current trends, and seasonal promotions.
- Styling Mannequins: Dressing mannequins in top seasonal pieces to preview the best of the collection.
- Technical duties: Creating technical plans and specifications for windows and in-store, drafting usage guidelines, checking compliance with guidelines as well as proper installation, and monitoring prototypes with suppliers.
- Planning: Overseeing project planning and monitoring, participating in the development of planograms for future points of sale (stores or seasonal pop-ups), and assisting in the coordination of remote installations.
- Visual Guidelines: Drafting VM guidelines for different brand’s stores and markets, applying them in the boutique environment, managing the visual database, and supporting the coordination of campaign changes.
- Trend Analysis: Staying updated on fashion trends to keep store designs fresh and relevant.
- Competitor Analysis: Monitoring best industry practices.
- Collaboration with Marketing Teams: Working closely with marketing and sales teams to align visual strategies with promotional campaigns.
- Use of Digital Tools: Utilizing software to create visual plans, mood boards, and 3D renderings for store setups.
- Customer Experience: Designing displays that not only attract customers but also improve their in-store shopping experience.
- Safety & Security: Working per the brand’s security standards and local legislation procedures with health & safety and security routines, to guarantee safety for the team and customers at all times.Â
Note that depending on the company and your level of experience, you may not manage all those responsibilities at once—especially during an internship. Some Visual Merchandising roles focus more on the visual component, while others look for candidates who’ll manage marketing aspects, and others will ask you to support the team more with market research, trend analysis, and project planning.
Essential Skills for Fashion Visual Merchandising
To excel in fashion visual merchandising, one needs a vast range of skills:
Creativity
Visual Merchandisers need to have a strong creative flair and think outside the box to create stunning and innovative in-store and window displays.
Commercial mindset
VMs adapt their activities according to store needs, budgets, and KPIs to reach commercial goals, so a commercial mindset is paramount.
Attention to Detail
Visual Merchandisers need to have a keen eye for products, colors, and spatial arrangements to ensure high-quality garment presentation.
Organizational Skills
A career in Visual Merchandising requires balancing multiple projects and meeting tight deadlines in a high-paced environment.
Customer orientation
Visual Merchandisers need a strong understanding of consumer behavior and knowledge of what attracts customers and influences their purchasing decisions. In addition, they focus on providing a positive shopping experience to customers by maintaining a clear customer flow through fixture placement and navigation in line with the company’s standards.
Computer Skills
VMs need to master photo and drawing tools (InDesign, Illustrator et Photoshop) and 3D software (Sketchup / Rhino / Keyshot). If you work in e-commerce, computer skills are even more essential.
Technical Skills
Familiarity with lighting techniques, store layout planning, and other technical skills may also be required depending on the specific VM position.
Strong Communication and Interpersonal Skills
The Visual Merchandiser is a communicator, a skill that translates both through visual creations to conveying ideas to team members and clients.
Team Player
The retail work environment is a collaborative one. Visual Merchandisers don’t work alone—they communicate with sales assistants, marketing teams, and brand partners. Therefore, being a team player is an essential quality in this job.
Passion for Retail
The world of retail is unique and different from the corporate one. Although VM involves various tasks on the computer, it is also a standing job, which requires back and forth moving through the store, lifting things, and so on, so you need to be comfortable with that and have great physical stamina.
How to Start a Career in Fashion Visual Merchandising
What to study
To start your career in Visual Merchandising, studies in fashion, merchandising, visual merchandising, styling, or retail management are usually not required by companies in the job postings. If you didn’t study either of those, it’s O.K as you can still become a Visual Merchandiser. You can take short online courses to showcase your interest and boost your resume, but it’s not essential. Here we explain in what other studies you can gain the necessary skills.
Given the nature of the job, students or recent graduates in Interior Design, Architecture, or related fields of spatial design can bring their expertise in building and arranging spaces.
Furthermore, majors in Graphic Design or Applied Arts can close the creative and visual gap of the job.
Finally, Marketing, Communication, or Business degrees will provide you with the foundations required for the role to better understand the commercial and customer-focused aspects of the job.
If you studied something else, don’t give up and focus on acquiring the necessary skills for VM. There are plenty of jobs where you can develop organizational skills, attention to detail, creativity, analytical skills, consumer understanding, etc.
Gaining Experience Through Internships
If you don’t have any retail or VM experience, you need to start with internships. Luxury brands are a popular choice but don’t overlook other possibilities, such as small/independent boutiques, fast fashion brands (which usually have more stores), retailers, and digital/e-commerce. Look around in your city—you’ll probably spot many fashion stores.
Fashion companies offer plenty of Visual Merchandising internships weekly. You can find them on the brands’ and groups’ career pages, LinkedIn, and our newsletter 365 Days of Fashion.
If you don’t find a role that suits you or not at your favorite company, send a cold email offering your help as an intern or assistant. Â
You can also come directly to the store and ask to speak with the manager if they are available. This strategy is especially good for small designer boutiques where the pace is slower and the sales team or even the founder/designer themselves are likely to have the time to talk with you. This way, you’ll directly establish a personal connection. You can go job hunting for the entire day with your printed resume in hands, just like the old days 😉
Building a Strong Visual Merchandising Portfolio
A great exercise for aspiring Visual Merchandisers is to visit your favorite brand store and share your findings in a portfolio. For this, you’ll need to do a little field trip.
Choose a brand and analyze its collection assortment in-store. Compare it with the latest collection seen on the runway, talk with the sales assistants, and build your report. If you are traveling, you can visit the brand’s stores in different cities to compare the assortment of the same collection.
I explain more in detail how to build your fashion portfolio in my online course Break into the Fashion Industry.
A career in fashion visual merchandising is ideal for those looking for a career that blends creativity with strategy, and anyone passionate about retail and customer experience. If this sounds like the ideal job for you, we hope this article gave you a better understanding of the role and where to begin.
Want to learn where to find fashion jobs, how to apply effectively, and make recruiters notice and hire you? Enroll now in our online course Break into the Fashion Industry, or start with this free webinar.Â
