Instructor: Vincent Quan
Course title: FM 116 – Fashion Business Practices
Lesson title: History of the Labor Force for Careers in Sales
A lesson plan was created and launched for FM 116 – Fashion Business Practices in Fall 2021. The lesson plan focused on careers in sales and probed the history of the labor force especially within the department and specialty store environments. Students were required to utilize various resources including FIT’s digital archives to access and document job descriptions and help wanted ads in the early to mid-twentieth century for numerous sales positions.
By providing a foundation to salesperson roles, students were then instructed to review several movie clips involving the interaction between the customer and salesperson within a fashion setting. As a secondary data point, the reality of these retail situations as depicted in cinema were then compared to, and contrasted against, historical job descriptions and help wanted ads.
Finally, students were asked to share their recent retail-related salesperson experiences with their colleagues both as shoppers and as salespersons. Specifically, these students shared their personal shopping experiences and professional experiences while working in the retail industry (reality) to the situations and labor conditions depicted in the movies and versus historical references.
A major learning outcome was achieved at the conclusion of the lesson plan when students were able to confirm or reject the interactions depicted. In addition, students identified gender specific differences between the early to mid-twentieth century salesperson roles which were heavily male oriented versus non-gender specific roles today. In addition, a few students confirmed some of the rules currently enforced by retailers more than twenty years ago are still in effect.
Finally, a discussion ensued in class regarding the huge surge in e-commerce retail brought on by the pandemic which clearly does not require any salesperson interaction whatsoever.