https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmjSDRTQXz0

 

For my informational interview, I chose to watch a video of Larry Bradfield, the visual merchandiser for an Urban Outfitters store in Pennsylvania. In this video, he discusses what it’s like to be able to have a store to express your creativity and use it as your personal creative outlet. So I “asked” him some questions pertaining to his job to see what a normal day at work was like for him.

 

Q: What does your job entail as a visual merchandiser?

A: Creating displays for around the store and in the window that the company would like to be in every store and then giving it a little twist to put my own personal touches on to it to make it my own.

 

Q: How would you describe the displays that are in the store?

A: Like a constantly evolving art installation.

 

Q: How do you come up with the parts of the displays that you get to improvise a little bit with?

A: I get inspiration from my past experience and my vision.

 

Q: How long have you been involved in art? What got you into art?

A: I’ve been involved in art my whole life. My dad was a painter and used oil paints, and my mom was an organist.

 

Q: Do you work alone or do you have help?

A: For the most part, I work alone.

My ideal job would be to be a buyer for the company I currently work for, Urban Outfitters. For the daily tasks I’d be completing, I’d love to have a day filled with meetings and appointments to look at new potential clothes and items that would be going into stores and be able to make the decisions on what would be going into stores. My ideal salary would be around $100,000, give or take a couple thousand. For this position, I’d have to work out of Philadelphia, or I could probably even stay in Delaware but live in Wilmington. But, if I were to just be a buyer for any company, I’d prefer being in a bigger city, such as Los Angeles or New York City. I would like to have some times where I’d be sitting at a desk and completing normal desk work, but most of the time I’d rather be out in different cities and going to meetings. I’d like a little bit of a more flexible schedule, where I’d be able to take a day or two off at times, especially after big trips.

My ideal career plan would be to work as a buyer for a clothing company. I would definitely have to start by getting a bachelors degree in Fashion Merchandising, and possibly get a masters degree as well. I would need to do some internships that are fashion merchandising related, to build my skills and my knowledge of merchandising and show that I have some field-work and experience before I graduate and start applying for head-of-store or corporate positions. I would like to accomplish this goal by perhaps working for a company as a general manager or visual manager in a store location, and then gradually working my way up to the corporate level where I would then become a buyer. I love shopping and picking out cute clothes and I’m great at outfitting and setting up intricate displays so I know this would be an ideal job for me and I would be very good at it. In the long term, I would like to become a buyer for a bigger and better company than the one I would have started with, so I would be making my way up in the fashion world and I would become more reputable.

I would rather have a job that I loved than have more money. I think that having a job that you genuinely enjoy is more important than any amount of money because if you love your job then you will never really work a day in your life. I also think that money cannot buy happiness but doing something that makes you happy will obviously buy your happiness.

I think that studying something that you love while in college would be much better for you than studying something that will maybe make you more money in the long run, because if you enjoy the course material then studying and working will be easier for you and you will want to learn the material rather than be miserable and not want to go to class or have any sort of interest in reading, studying, or paying attention during class.