The Process of Product Development
from Amy Zimmerman of GUESS?

Read these steps for a great insight into Amy's production job at GUESS?.

  • Shop the market. Research what the competition is up to. Seek out the next hottest trends. Be aware of store displays and what colors are offered. Keep up with developing trends in accessories and think of how GUESS? can produce its own counterpart. The fun part of the research is travel in the U.S. and Europe.

  • Brainstorm! Take all the reference material - the fabric and shopping samples, any magazine cutouts - and lay them out together. Turn research ideas into new products that mesh with the GUESS aesthetic. This is where creative skills come in; the conceptualizing ground where new products are born.

  • Before deciding to go forward with the product, it must be related back to the main line being offered to ensure a smooth blend.

  • Meet with trim and swatch suppliers for the materials.

  • When you've decided on materials for the product, you then take all swatches, trims, magazine tears, and flat sketches to the sample developer. The prototypes they make go back and forth until the accessory is tweaked to perfection.

  • Once the sample is perfected, she then must convince the GUESS? store buyers to carry the accessory. She also has to educate them on trends - so here's where she shows off her trend research. In this step, she's involved with numbers - past figures of what's sold and what hasn't, quantities of a new product that a buyer should get, and how many of each in what color. Amy helps the buyer make these decisions.

  • She helps to coordinate the shipping of the product and also conducts final quality control.

  • The cycle continues by tracking sales of the new product to see if the trend is taking off or not.