I notice alot of open operations /visual jobs across my state on job board.. did these people get promoted or booted?
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Just curious, does anyone know what is the pay cap for a visual captain or any captain?
The problem is that they should never have put so many Visual Associates into the OVM role. This is an Operations role that covers all aspects of the Support responsibilities,up to and including fulfillment and merchandising. I myself was in Visual roles for many years for other companies. I slowly saw that role being less important in many stores. I was an executive at Macy's and saw first hand how divided Visual was from the rest of the support team and the store associates. The Visual in my store was extremely talented and did amazing set-ups. But with that came too much drama and non productive work. They were not global at all. The Visual Role needs to be more inclusive with the Merchandising team. It is no longer about just dressing mannequins and doing seasonal pop up shops. Everything is becoming streamlined and so should that.
With regard to the Visual Department, in all my years at Macy's I have found Visual to be one of the most consistently outstanding departments in the store. It was one of my favorite things about Macy's.
To suggest that a staff of three takes a day to dress a mannequin , a "ten minute job", must have been intended as an exaggeration. I'm allowing for all the variations of personnel, but after thirty years of working in the visual field, I've yet to witness anything of this kind. Furthermore, as pointed out, mannequin dressing is only one of many responsibilities addressed by the visual staff and, if correctly done, not nearly as easy as it may appear. In many professions there are jobs that can be accomplished quickly, but are they done well? Take note of all the other activities of the visual staff: Christmas installation, shop installation such as "Swim" and "Coats", signing, painting, formatting of walls, selecting fixtures appropriate for the vendor should they not exist and countless other tasks. The key to all of this is professionalism, the standard by which a company is known. I've seen what untrained people can do, and it's rarely good. Mismatched fixturing, similarly mismatched shelving, hardware that's not the same and is installed incorrectly so that shelves are not aligned, gridding issues...I could elaborate further but these are among some of the challenges which the visual staff are often expected to address and correct. Sadly, over the years, standards have slipped, but to suggest that a visual staff is not needed is rather like suggesting an orchestra does not need the finest of musicians, that is unless the goal is amateurism.
Wow you are really stupid if you think mannequins are all visual did
Why pay 3 people to work on 1 mannequin all day? Takes 10 minutes
No... visual is not coming back...the company is not smart enough to know that visual did the fixture choice, placement, wall scapes, merchandising, special project set up, seasonal set ups, and made many decisions regarding flow. The OVMs know it now, but upper management thinks it's working because we do the dog and pony show.
Imagine how dumb is it to teach someone how to paint and thinking that they will create something good.
These openings are probably out there due to Visual people leaving the company. Many people stayed in these positions for years due to their love of fashion, art, and design. With restructuring the majority of the visual teams were integrated into the store as generalists which doesn’t fit with their passion for presentation, and also lets face it, when a company essentially tells you that they don’t value your skills and close down your pathway to promotion there isn’t much to keep you in that job. Imagine asking all the sales people to spend 2 days a week processing merchandise on the loading dock,,,,,, and take it from there. Others see the writing on the wall and have managed to assimilate themselves into the store and now just don't want to go back to that visual Captain position that may be eliminated at any time.
Neither.
These people are quitting. OVM jobs have been available since July cause no one wants them since they are just way too much work.
I'm in a Growth store, one of the highest performers in the company, and I haven't heard anything about visual managers coming back.
I think bigger stores are bringing back the visual manager or lead.