I will to explain the Podium.
As many people might know, podium is to order the whole collection for the next season. 2 times every year, end of January and July. The January one is to order for the winter collection that year, and the July is for the spring summer collection the next year.
During the podium, the shop manager could bring one of his staff to the podium, and the entrance permit is something unique for the podium, it's a necklace but with some symbolic design of Hermes and written the name of your shop in it, I have one( the shop manager gave me as a small gift when I finished the intern), I will post a photo later. And of course there's a brochure , like a map, showing different areas of each department.
It lasts around 3 days, and within the 3 days, the shop manager should choose all the collection for the shop. He would be given a budget of money (something like monopoly) , and he can use these money to buy. Every department has its budget, so the manager should be very careful about how much he purchase. It's actually quite a difficult job, as there's so many choices in a whole collection, and you should choose the most interesting one to put in your shop within a short time and limited budget. It's all about the taste of the manager. And the budget depends on the sale of the shop of last year.
So a manager can not buy all the pieces in all sizes for his shop. If there's such an item which no manager interested in, then this item would be never available in any shop, or simply said, it would never be produced. The factory only produce the pieces and sizes which the managers buy. So when the collection is available in the shop, there's always situation that we could not find the size or the item that client wants as no manager buy it at the podium. The same for the bags, if there's a color or size which no manager buy, it would not be produced, maybe only in special order.
And bags are more chicky then the others, they divide the colors into 3 groups. Group A includes the color such as pink, light blue or bright colors. Group B includes black, grey, dark blue such classic color. Group C includes gold, dark grey such colors which ain't popular. And of course managers are not allowed to buy all bags in the A group, if he wants a bag in A group, then he should choose 2 in C group at the same time or 1 in C group and 2 in B group. So even the manager wants to have more popular colors, it's not allowed. And that's why the pink bags are so rare. This rule also applies to the size of bags, if a manager wants a 25 Kelly, then he must take 35 kelly at the same time.
Normally a manager has no preference to buy crocodile bags, it's not due to he doesn't like them. It's only because within the limited budget, one crocodile bag= 4-5 classic bags, which means he could satisfy 4-5 clients instead only one client. But the manager would have in mind that how many VIP client or rich clients who desire for crocodile piece in his shop, and order some pieces for them.
In a word, Hermes is different from other companies. In other brands, they produce all the sizes and models as long as in the collection, so you could find the any size you want any piece you are interested in at the good monent( if you try to find at the end of a collection, you still have poor chance). But in Hermes, it's all according to what the manager buy at the podium.
So next time, if you are really interested in some piece when you watch the show, you can ask the shop manager whether he buy such a piece of certain size from the podium. You could have a straight answer that you could have it or no.
