Q&A

The fashion apparel employs on average the youngest professional who are also the least experienced and least stable in the retail industry. When it comes to sales workforce, the majority of employees in fashion apparel sector are women: at the sales representative level they represent 57 percent of the professionals, 62.9 percent at the branch manager level, and 51.4 percent for sales managers. The proportion of women in this sector is higher than the overall sales industry (60.3 percent versus 55 percent). Although it was said above that these workers are more prone to change jobs, the employment stability rate in fashion apparel is equally low regardless of gender and is in fact slightly better among women (23.9 months) than men (23.7 months). Sales representatives, branch managers, and sales managers’ profiles all exhibit the same patterns described above for the sub-sector. Compared with the other sub-sectors, fashion apparel requires the least working experience to achieve mid-management level sales positions: 5.2 years to become a branch manager, 5.5 years for sales manager.