My First Trip Abroad 1965

The Grand Tour of Europe

Even after more than forty years I can still feel the excitement of this experience. After working with foreign made products for almost ten years, six of them with Macy's Foreign Buying Office, I finally got the opportunity to experience these markets first hand. It was an unusual event because most of the buying trips were made by the Macy or May Co. department buyers representing the multiple store units in each group. I had been working with these buying teams helping them to prepare them for the various group buying trips to either the Far East or Europe for over five years. Since none of the Macy group store buyers wanted to accompany the May Co. group buyers I was given a buying budget to purchase European products for delivery and sale in the fall of 1965. I was flattered that the Macy store buyers had enough faith in me to select and purchase several hundred thousand dollars worth of goods for their departments. So off I went accompanied by three May Co. store buyers from Denver, St. Louis and Cleveland.

Getting a Passport and Preparing a Buying Plan

Getting a passport was the easy part although in 1965 few people had them. Preparing the buying plan was a serious endeavor. Each product category in the Boy's Furnishings (shirts and sweaters) and Boy's Clothing (jackets, casual and dress ) pants had to be carefully considered. From an overall dollar open to buy amount I then segmented this amount into various product categories. The next step was to divide those dollar amounts by an estimated cost per unit to arrive at the number of units to purchase by product category. The danger of this type of trip would be finding many offerings so attractive that you wanted to buy them all. Obviously this was not possible. At the same time not buying enough quantity depth in size and color for each item would make the offering to the retail customer less meaningful.

Travel With a Group on Business

This Experience opened my eyes and broadened my goals in many ways. One of those was to learn to act as a buying team. There were 3 buyers representing 12 May Co. stores and myself representing 6 Macy units. Because each department store unit (along with its branch stores) were located in major metropolitan areas, some of the customer requirements were slightly different. In order to concentrate our buying power however, we needed to agree on many purchases. Size and color assortments might be different but we agreed to buy the same items for all stores in the group

Where We Went and What We Purchased

Our first stop after leaving New York was London. These were the days of Carnaby Street and the Beatles. A whole new trend for Men's and Boy's apparel was coming into play so this was an important market to explore. As we window shopped the various fashionable stores in the Carnaby Street area, we greatly impressed by this new fashion revolution. For more info on Carnaby Street click on this link: (Carnaby Street story). Women's fashions have been in more dynamic than Men's from 1860 to 1960, but then the Beatles phenomenon change that scenario. But, our budgets did not contain any latitude for these new products so we just took at lot of photos and purchased a few sample items to show our associates back home. England was the market for knitwear and outerwear. So we purchased Shetland sweaters (Where is Shetland) and wool duffle coats. (What's a Duffle Coat). From London we flew to Dublin, Ireland which was a special event for me because of my family heritage. Here again knitwear was our focus but we found the prices higher than in England so no purchases were made. Knitwear was our main focus in Italy. Our office in Florence was well organized  and we purchased most of our sweaters through them. It was also a wonderful city to visit from a cultural viewpoint. Both Frankfurt in West Germany and Zurich, Switzerland were interseting cities but the product offering from these markets were very expensive.