Negotiation Skills..................

One of the most important skills a buyer and a seller must muster is the ability to negotiate. As most high street fashion selling prices are very competitive. The greatest scope for improving profit in a product is the reduction of cost price. There are many factors that influence the final cost price of a product including fabric. Garment construction, order volume, lead time, and delivery terms. These particular issues are discussed in more detail throughout the book.

 

Negotiation is a process of communication and exchange through which the interested parties make a series of demands and compromises; it involves the trading of benefits between parties. The basic principal is to trade what is of low value to you but of greater value of the other party, thereby reducing the cost of success to you. However the aim of a negotiation should be to ensure that both parties are happy with the final outcome or agreement .otherwise one or the other will not continue to participate.

The old scenario of the retailer always winning and supplier always losing result in both parties effectively losing. Traditionally, the dominant fashion retail groups have seen the availability of large number of supplies as a means of trading one off against another to achieve a cheaper cost price consequently many of the suppliers who lost out ceased to do business with those retailers again. Short-time cost price gains resulted in short term relationships with many suppliers. With the end result being a large unwieldy and diverse supplier base operating as efficiently as it should