Fashion Buying & Merchandising

University of Manchester

At The University of Manchester we offer four BSc courses in Fashion Business and Technology. On our courses you'll discover the exciting industry of fashion business, and the many creative, practical, technical, and business elements that contribute to the fashion industry. You'll explore how textiles and products are created, tested, sourced, manufactured, managed, marketed, promoted, and retailed. This BSc course in Fashion Buying and Merchandising will equip you with an understanding of the creative fashion drivers needed to be a successful fashion buyer or merchandiser, such as the ability to pick out and identify trends, as well as a solid grasp of the business acumen required for the products they buy to be a commercial success. The strong textile science underpinning this course ensures excellent knowledge of the technical performance and construction of the garments. The course also focusses on the numerical and data analysis and skills which are essential to fashion buying and merchandising. You’ll study the way in which the buyer interacts with marketers to understand consumer demand, as well as merchandisers to facilitate the flow of stock in the most profitable way.

The first year establishes the fundamentals in fashion business, textile science and technology through the core units in fashion buying, management, and marketing and the core textile science and garment technology units where students are introduced to fibres, materials, fabrics, and textile production processes.

The second year explores specific aspects of management and marketing in depth with subjects such as Product development, Operations Management, Fashion Business and Analysis and Garment Production technology. There are also various optional specialist subjects such as circular design for products, technical textile structures, creative product development, digital branding, international business and sustainable approaches to fashion business and fashion promotions and the instore environment. 

The final year provides an opportunity to consolidate and extend specialist knowledge in areas of buying and merchandising studied in previous years. You may choose from a range of fashion business options within leadership, sustainability, and fashion business in the digital age. The final year projects allow you to specialise in an area of your choice, for example focusing on developing a broader corporate strategy for a fashion business, the development of a business start-up company or a project that combines business skills and innovative materials and technologies for emerging fashion and textiles markets.

Students graduate with experience and understanding of the science and technology behind the fabrics and garments they work with, as well as gaining critical and analytical understanding of the processes, procedures and aspects that make up the fashion industry. We equip our students with the skills to interpret the creative and technical elements that contribute to product development, as well as manage and market commercially viable fabrics and garments worldwide. There’s no knowing where a degree in Fashion Business Technology from The University of Manchester could take you! For more information about this course, including the kinds of careers and companies our graduates go on to, please see our department website.