On bags allocation: I feel like this has been explained elsewhere but I know it’s hard to search and flip through the vast amount of threads here, so perhaps I can try to explain again how it likely works at my - and perhaps many other - stores, where the quota bag allocation is done by the SM for a specific client rather than an SA.
It goes like this: a bag comes in and is ready to be sold. SAs look at the bag and checks against their list of clients. They put in proposals for a client who they’d offer the bag to. The SM looks at the proposals and makes a decision on which client gets approved for the bag, with the decision driven by the client’s profile, and can include considerations for how strong is the spending, what categories does the client shop in (what’s the leather % of total, do they purchase things that are harder to move and therefore harder to hit targets for), how loyal they are to the store, how long has it been since their last bag offer…and so on (some SMs look at things in more details and some may not; it’s really up to them). Besides just the client profile itself though, they could also be swayed by other factors, from things such as the performance of the SA, how long it’s been since the SA got a super hot or super rare bag, etc., to literally maybe just how the SM feels like doing on that day (and if you believe gossip from social media…sometimes there’s also just good ole office politics going on, as they inevitably do at any workplace).
Fun(?) aside: at my store it’s actually forbidden for an SA to know which client “beat out” their client when the bag went to another person (in practice I think they can find out pretty easily when the client comes to pick up the bag lol but it’s the thought that counts I guess). I’m not sure at all if this is just what my SM wanted to do or more general. As one learns, with Hermes, the question to a lot of answers on “how does X work” is “it really depends”.
It used to be that this approval process was only required for quota bags, and maybe some super popular bags depending on supply and demand. The SM has discretion to decide what items need their approval or not, and can take things on and off that list based on what they see the market demand is. Which means again the answer is often “it really depends (on how your specific store is run)”. In recent years though, some markets such as China now reportedly require formerly “open” bags to all go through an SM approval.
FSH operates on its own system and is always an outlier. And I’m sure the countries that have a pure “wishlist” in Europe operates a somewhat different model.
P.S. for the case of what I described, if an SA officially offers a bag to a client and the client rejects the bag, it could mean that the bag does not then go to the next client on the same SA’s list; instead it would be the second client in line from the proposals, who is often from another SA. My SA likes to confirm my interest firmly before putting in a proposal. This means sometimes I hear about bags that are coming, with the caveat that they won’t all be my bags (sadly!). My SA lets me know when it’s a bag we are “trying” to get (I’m totally cool when it ends up not being approved for me and that sure happens!). Meanwhile, some other SAs prefer to not do it this way; instead they will get the full approval first before letting their client know. As far as I can tell, this just seems to be personal style and choice in how they like to work & maybe how they think their client will respond when they couldn’t get a bag approved.
Everyone involved are human beings! While the SAs and SMs have a job with a clear goal (sales), they are still just humans. So again, it often really depends.
To share some other fun datapoints I’ve had:
- I have had experiences where my SA sees a bag that is coming, confirms my interest and puts in the proposal & gets the approval, all before that bag arrives at the store. This was more than a week in advance (apologies I don’t remember exactly how long in each cases). If I were to guess, they can see what is on SM’s orders and work with that list, or maybe the bag was already on its way but the shipment took a very long time to arrive from Paris!
- I’ve been offered a couple different bags (of course can’t get all of them, again sadly!) and then selected one of them; the others were “on display” in my store by the time I went in to pick up said bag. So I think the SM (at least in some cases) has discretion on what bags go on display too. And given that they were on the table, this means these display bags are going to be eventually sold at my store (could even be already allocated to someone). This is of course not to say that all display items work the same way…in fact I’m sure they don’t, because again, it depends…
Sorry for the long post, but hopefully it’s of use to at least someone!
