Be that you are looking for a new job or you want to take a new path in fashion, it is always interesting to discover the different careers of the sector and know exactly who does what to choose which path is made for you.
When we want to understand what could be the best career for us, the first thing we do is having a look at the different figures making an industry to draw inspiration from them to understand the right moves to do to get the role we aim at.
Unfortunately, it usually happens with the most famous job titles. Everyone would love to be Anna Wintour, and not only because she has an interesting job and holds one of the most powerful and influential positions in the fashion industry but, above all, everyone knows what is an Editor-In-Chief. It is not necessarily for other careers who despite being less known are not only interesting but essential for fashion to exist.
The reason we analyse all fashion career so thoroughly is to help you find the position that fits you.
And today, we will analyse the careers in e-commerce.
We all know now that the digital industry is here to stay and has enabled the creation of new jobs that didn’t exist in the past.
E-commerce is now as powerful as stores in the most famous shopping streets of fashion capitals. It has reached such a level that companies are investing in developing their own e-commerce department.
A lot of e-commerce roles are frequently available, so on top of being an interesting career path, it is also a market in expansion offering a lot of opportunities.
Personally, I am most fascinated by the careers in digital and e-commerce. It wasn’t a case that I chose to do my first fashion internship in this sector. I was working for E-lite, the joint venture created by Kering and Yoox-Net-A-Porter to manage the e-commerce sites of Kering’s brands such as Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney (who was still part of the group at the time), Alexander McQueen and Brioni.
I was fortunate enough to be able to see the best of the e-commerce in action from the technology side of it through Yoox-Net-A-Porter, fashion leader in online retail. I also had the privilege to see how each Kering brand would organise to manage their online store internationally.
There are so many careers in e-commerce, but not every figure I will talk about are present in all companies. There are brands whose e-commerce department is made of a small team whereas others only have one role covering all the parts. Roles change slightly from a brand to another – for example, Kim, A.P.C. Online Content Manager explained to us her role could also be described as a Project Manager one – but all in all, here are the main e-commerce roles.
Customer Care
There’s an entire team divided by nationalities that manage the customer care for every brand. This team analyses the clients’ demands and answer questions regarding a product, an order or a return. When it comes down to a luxury product, there’s also a post-sales customer service: a customer can contact you 2 years after purchasing a 3000€ bag to tell you it’s damaged. In brief, customer care manages all the clients’ demands and requests made online, but not only, they can also liaise with a physical store to help a client.
Merchandiser
The job of a merchandiser in e-commerce is to analyse how sales performed. They do competitor and season analysis to understand what works, what didn’t and why. They use Excel and create presentations on the company’s performances.
Visual Merchandiser
In store, a visual merchandiser curates the windows, in e-commerce, they will curate the disposition of the products on the site. When you visit Asos, the disposition and the order of the products is chosen by someone. This is the visual merchandiser. In smaller teams, that could be something the E-commerce Manager would do.
E-commerce Manager or Web Project Manager
This person is in charge of the online store. They coordinate the launch of products on the site taking into account the new collections and what is happening in the physical shops. They supervise products and campaign photoshoots, the digital communication like the newsletter and social media, and they do a performance analysis of the site to then decide which modifications and new functionalities need to be implemented. The Web Project Manager is similar to the E-commerce manager and generally, they develop online projects taking into account the necessary costs and resources.
Web Marketing
An e-commerce sits online so behind it, you have ITs who develop the site and its functionalities. There are also UX designers whose job is all about the user experience, so they spend time studying and testing continuously to improve and simplify the user’s path on the site. Imagine someone who would navigate the site, put products in the basket and complete the purchase to check if everything works. There are also developers and production assistants.
Some companies put these roles either in the marketing department, either in the e-commerce team. The Web Marketing team is any way working on the site to help increase profits. There will be a Web Marketing Expert or Specialist whose job will be to use SEO, SEM and create online advertising campaigns to increase the site’s traffic. So they will develop either an organic traffic strategy (in other words, ensure that the site appears in Google) either digital marketing with the implementation of campaigns on Google, Adwords, Facebook, Instagram and affiliations to reach a bigger audience.
In this team, there’s also the Campaign Developer – the person in charge of conceiving and develop the graphics and the coding of the newsletter. They test it first before sending it to all the database and then analyse how it performed. So someone will check how many people bought through the newsletter, how many didn’t, what did they buy and how they behave online.
We interviewed Aurora Pavan, Trade Marketing Assistant at Asos. She explained us thoroughly her role working in one of the biggest retailers in the world.
Logistics
In an e-commerce team, an essential part are all the figures composing the logistics team.
Products need to be controlled, packed up and sent quickly. Coordinating logistics is not an easy job but it is the heart of e-commerce and there’s a team created to manage it.
E-commerce Buyer
Like for physical store, an online store has a buyer. Their role is to analyse sales to choose the products that will be sold on the site. To understand better this career, we interview Marta, Buying Assistant Women Footwear at Zalando, an e-commerce giant that has various departments divided by product category. The e-commerce of a monobrand also has buyers but in a lesser capacity. Here the distinction between buyers will be around Ready-To-Wear, Accessories and Shoes. Everything depends on how big is the brand. One buyer will take care of the buying campaign each season and will help the e-commerce manager and/or the visual merchandiser for products launching online according to a calendar. They will then do an analysis of the categories that work the best, the products that are less successful. Sometimes, a buyer’s job also encompasses a merchandiser’s task.
Content
A career unique to e-commerce and that you won’t find for a physical store is one linked to content. It involves writing homepage copy, product descriptions, newsletters and social media copy. A brand’s content is often analysed, created and translated into all languages by an entire team. Ben explained to us what a Content Expert does.
For the Head of Online Content, we asked Sara who is now working in Dubai, to tell us about this role.
I hope this post has been of some help and gave you a clearer image of how works an e-commerce site and who are the different figures and what are the different careers making it.
thanks for info