In 2019, UO experienced a corporate restructure where visual merchandising positions were realigned in the store census hierarchy to report directly into store managers. This shifted store manager responsibilities to include increased visual acumen, and we focused an entire day of our annual district summit to training store managers on the principles of outfitting and styling.
I empowered one of my strongest visual leaders, Satya Sivananda, to take the lead on our training initiative. Together, we overhauled existing but outdated resources to create a guide that simplifies styling objectives to their simplest terms. The guide also educates store managers on the correct visual language to use when providing feedback and teaching their teams. It was a huge success and greatly improved the district’s overall visual acuity!
