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PODCAST

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising

Elisabeth Mac Hale

This podcast "Thrive in Fashion" is your ultimate guide to navigating the dynamic world of FASHION BUYING & MERCHANDISING. Hosted by Elisabeth Mac Hale, a seasoned fashion buyer and industry consultant, this podcast is designed for aspiring buyers, fashion graduates & boutique owners, passionate about the fashion business. Each episode explores different aspects of fashion buying, from trend analysis and product development to retail strategy. Elisabeth shares her wealth of experience,

arts fashion & beauty

All Episodes

00:11:11

What Fashion Buyers Can Learn From Merchandisers

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/10/05

In this episode of the Thrive in Fashion Buying podcast, Elisabeth explains how to think more like a merchandiser, so you can read what is behind a result before you decide where your budget goes. She covers what to look at when a category is ahead of plan, how to judge whether a selling style deserves more investment, why sales growth can hide an unhealthy business, and why profit has to be built into the buy and not recovered at the end of the season.If you are in the first few years of your

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00:16:01

How Fashion Buyers Handle Difficult Conversations

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/09/28

Once you have a few years of buying behind you, the hardest part of the job is rarely the product or the numbers. It is getting your range decisions through the business when your merchandiser, supply chain, allocation team and senior managers all have a different view of what the range should be. In this episode, Elisabeth shares how experienced fashion buyers handle push-back, difficult people and tough conversations across the product development process, from concept to the shop floor.In this

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00:16:13

Buying Decisions in a Soft Market

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/09/22

When a market goes soft, the instinct is to assume demand has disappeared. It usually hasn't. Your customer is still there, but she's taking longer to decide, buying one item where she used to buy two, and waiting for a reason to commit. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale breaks down what actually needs your attention when trade slows down: full price sell-through, forward cover, intake phasing, and the commitments sitting behind your OTB. She walks through why a decision that looks safe

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00:10:20

What to do when your margin drops

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/09/14

What do you do when your sales are on plan but your margin has dropped. In this episode Elisabeth explains why that happens, what it tells you about the quality of your sales rather than the volume, and the questions to ask in your Monday trade meeting to find the cause before it grows into a bigger and costly problem,IN THIS EPISODE· Why margin is driven by the value and mix of what you sell, not by the number of units that leave the shop floor· The five most common causes of a margin drop, from a

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00:14:05

How to Review a Poor-Performing Fashion Range

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/09/08

When a range underperforms, the initial assumption is almost always that the product was wrong. It sometimes is. In this episode, Elisabeth goes through the small number of reasons ranges that contribute to a poor trading range, what a proper category analysis includes compared to the blame conversation that some buying offices run instead.In this episode:· Diagnose an underperforming range against the real causes: · Run a category analysis that produces information rather than defensiveness,

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00:17:34

Q&A's - OTB, Late Deliveries, Range Plans ..

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/08/26

There are lots of questions in buying that are left unanswered. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale answers some of those directly: these are questions that come up repeatedly from buyers at different stages of their careers, and that the person asking rarely wants to raise out loud.In this episode:- How to know if your OTB figure is right- What to do when a supplier keeps pushing back the delivery date- Do you have to choose between product instinct and commercial data - Why the feeling that

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00:10:31

What Makes the Buyer-Merchandiser Relationship Work

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/08/18

The relationship between buying and merchandising influences how a season performs.. It is not always obvious but when it works well it shows in the way decisions are made, how the two roles challenge each other and how smoothly the work moves from one to the other. When it struggles, the commercial impact can appear long before the real problem is clear. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale explores what the best buyer-merchandiser partnerships have in common and what tends to gat in the way when

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00:22:33

How to Develop Yourself in a Fashion Buying Career...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/08/12

Professional development in Fashion Buying is largely self-directed. Most organisations do not have a structured approach to developing their buyers, and the ones who wait for a plan from above tend to wait a long time. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale shares some examples s she used throughout her career to manage her own professional development, and the signals she looks for when she sees buyers doing the same. In this episode:- Why tracking your decisions and their outcomes is one of the most

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00:17:41

What Nobody Tells You About Your First Year as a...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/08/04

In this episode:- Why most buying offices run on an undesigned apprenticeship model.- The most important professional relationship to build it deliberately from the start- What to do when your product instinct and the commercial data do not match.- How to read the room before you speak in it.If you want to understand where you are in your development and what to prioritise next, take the free ' Are You Buyer-Ready?' quiz:If you would like to develop your fashion buying knowledge from

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00:18:48

I've Hired 100's of Fashion Buyers. Here's What Makes...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/07/27

Most fashion buyer CVs share the same problem: they read like a job description. They list responsibilities, use business jargon, and tell what a buyer was supposed to do not what they actually achieved or what they can bring to a new role.Elisabeth Mac Hale has worked in Fashion Buying for more than 25 years and reviewed hundreds of buyer CV's. In this episode she shares what she consistently sees on the CVs that don't make it through the initial review, and what the ones that land at the

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00:18:01

How Fashion Buying for Digital Commerce Is Different...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/07/20

In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale looks at what buying for digital commerce genuinely requires across traditional e-commerce, drops and limited releases, and marketplace models. She talks about what changes in range and product selection when you're buying for digital, including the taxonomy problem, the visual presentation challenge, and why online ranges tend to grow in the wrong direction. She also addresses how trading and OTB work differently online, from the speed of feedback to return

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00:17:43

Why Fashion Buyers Struggle with Sustainability

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/07/13

Sustainability is an increasingly important topic in fashion retail, and one of the least clearly defined. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale cuts through the noise to give fashion buyers a practical understanding of what sustainability actually means across a product and why the label on a garment rarely tells the full story.Elisabeth breaks down what sustainability covers across the full product lifecycle, from raw material origin through manufacturing process, components and trims, packaging,

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00:26:21

What AI Is Actually Doing to the Fashion Buyer's Role...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/07/06

AI is moving into fashion retail fast, and buying teams are already feeling it. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale looks at what AI tools are useful for in the buying process, where the risks are,and what a buyer needs to understand to use these tools well without losing the commercial judgement that makes them valuable. Elisabeth covers three areas where AI supports better buying decisions: trend and demand forecasting, range planning and option analysis, and customer data interpretation. She

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00:12:40

Why the Best Fashion Buyers Are Not Afraid to Say...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/06/29

Every fashion buyer makes wrong calls. The question is not whether it happens but instead what you do when it does. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale talks about getting a buying decision wrong and how you can learn from the ability to identify a mistake early, act on it without delay, and take something genuinely useful from it. In this episode:• Why getting it wrong is inevitable in buying -- and what separates buyers who recover well from those who do not• The commercial cost of protecting a

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00:14:25

What I Look for When I Review a Fashion Buyer's...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/06/22

Fashion college teaches you how to buy. It does not teach you how to be assessed as a professional in a commercial business. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale explains what is actually being looked at in a performance review: the buying-specific technical skills and the professional competencies that sit alongside them and why understanding the full picture changes how you prepare, how you show up, and how you develop. In this episode:• Why your buying numbers are only part of what a manager is

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00:12:23

How Fashion Buyers can succeed at Supplier Negotiations

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/06/15

Supplier negotiation is one of the most commercially significant skills a fashion buyer develops and one area where limiting habits can form early. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale shares what she wishes she had understood sooner about supplier negotiations, and what she sees buyers consistently getting wrong, regardless of how experienced they are. In this episode:• Why treating every negotiation as a price conversation limits the commercial value of a supplier relationship• What it means to

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00:11:11

The Seasonal Planning Mistakes Fashion Buyers Keep...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/06/08

Seasonal planning is one of the most important technical skills a fashion buyer develops and one of the areas where the most avoidable mistakes happen. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale draws on 25+ years of industry experience to walk through the four seasonal planning mistakes she sees most often, why they happen, and what buyers can do to build more resilient, commercially grounded plans. In this episode:• Why planning purely against the previous year creates hidden risks in your seasonal

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00:17:19

What Fashion Buyers Get Wrong About Range Reviews

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/06/01

Range review and Range Sign off meetings are one of the most commercially significant meetings in the buyers calender. In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale draws on 25+ years of experience on both sides of the review room to explain what managers are actually assessing, why creative confidence alone is not enough, and what buyers can do differently to walk in prepared rather than just rehearsed. In this episode:• Why your range review is a not a creative presentation• The difference between defending

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00:13:19

How Fashion Buyers Build a Reputation for Strategic...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/05/25

Most mid-level buyers are waiting for a promotion to make them strategic. In this episode, Elisabeth explains why that is the wrong order and what the specific, observable behaviours are that change how you are perceived long before the formal assessment happens. In This EpisodeWhy being strategic is a set of visible behaviours and why you can learn these.The difference between thinking in tasks and thinking in outcomes, and a specific weekly habit that changes how you approach your work. How to

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00:14:31

Why Fashion Buyers Struggle to Push Back at Work (And...

Thrive in Fashion Buying and Merchandising ·

2026/05/18

Most buyers at the three to five year stage in their careers know when they should push back. The challenge is knowing how to do this in a way that is commercially useful rather than personally costly.In this episode, Elisabeth Mac Hale breaks down why mid-career buyers struggle to raise a contrary view at work, and what the language and approach of a well-delivered pushback actually looks like. This episode is for buyers who have the commercial instinct to see problems coming but are not yet

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70 results

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