Marketing and Merchandising for
Fashion-
Success
Thousands of grads working in art and design. -
Experienced Instructors
Learn from instructors who work in the industry. -
Endless Opportunity
Use your skills anywhere in the world.
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Diploma
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60 Weeks
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online
Program Overview
The global fashion industry relies on marketing and merchandising professionals who have an eye for style and a brain for business. If you're ready to combine your joint passions for fashion and marketing, VCAD's Marketing and Merchandising for Fashion diploma program is for you.
The Marketing and Merchandising for Fashion program introduce students to the foundations of the fashion industry, including design theory, retailing, industry-standard software marketing, event promotions, displays and merchandising.
Graduates of this program will build a portfolio of work and be prepared to apply for fashion jobs in areas like public relations, marketing, merchandising, retailing, event and promotions planning, or as a fashion writer.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES
- Buyer A Buyer or Fashion Purchaser, makes purchasing decisions for a clothing retailer by combining one's analytical mind with their eye for style.
- Fashion Retail Management Fashion Retail Management involves the complete processes of designing, manufacturing, marketing, distributing and retailing various fashion products.
- Fashion Marketing Fashion Marketing involves curating merchandise from selection to production and the presentation of products to retail customers, including POP, displays and other marketing materials to maximize a company's sales and profitability.
- Visual Display Assistant Visual Display Assistant designs the visual look of the sales floor and the placement of its merchandise.
- Marketing Assistant A Marketing Assistant ensures marketing campaigns reach their target audience through research, feedback and support.
- Assistant Store Manager Assistant Store Manager works closely with management to coordinate and evaluate business operations through scheduling, task assignment, and customer service.
SKILLS GAINED
- Illustrate fashion design concepts.
- Apply the knowledge and skills resulting from the study of modern fashion illustration concepts and techniques to present day marketing problems.
- Provide a history of the influence of fashion on each generation of designers.
- Deconstruct garments and finishing techniques.
- Map different classifications of apparel to target markets and promotions.
- Describe the product development, apparel production, and textile life cycles and the impact these have on successful merchandising and marketing.
- Clearly articulate sales and advertising plans using industry standard tools to generate competitive analysis.
- Describe and demonstrate the role of target marketing, market segmentation, and niche markets in the effective placement of sales product.
- Articulate the role of branding and private labels in generating sales.
- Define retailing and explain the steps in strategic planning for meeting ROI.
- Write, present, and critique plans and proposals.
- Successfully participate and contribute to the success of a team.
- Develop a professional network.
Program Magazine
Courses Timeline
Your program begins with teaching you the fundamental skills necessary for your future in fashion. These traditional, digital and informational skills give you a strong foundation in colour theory, pattern making and garment construction — all are focused on building your skills and knowledge to succeed in the fashion industry.
Now we build on the basic skills we have developed. We continue to build upon these foundational skills. You begin to draw, design and create at a higher level. The foundation is now in place.
You continue to expand your skill set. You learn the fundamentals of the design process and start to see it executed in your work. Technology becomes more important as we move our work onto our computers. We use many programs to give you industry experience and teach you how to design and build.
Now you have the tools and skills to ideate and execute your designs, specifically how to make garments and patterns.
Here you will start to learn about the specialties in our industry. You have the skills and foundation. Term 5 is about applying them and building your vision from scratch to execution. We start building your portfolio and professional development.
- Term 1
- Term 2
- Term 3
- Term 4
- Term 5
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Photoshop I
Through this 'hands-on' course, the student will learn the fundamentals of design, advanced features and tips to prepare images for digital output and print. By the end of this course, the student will be able to create, modify, and enhance sophisticated images using raster editing tools and features; craft special effects; work in 3D space; and prepare files for export to various applications in web, mobile, print, and manufacturing.
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Colour & Design
Understanding colour and design principles through exploration and application across media, visual, and applied design genres. This course will introduce students to the fundamental principles of colour theory through design, such as layout, composition, balance, colour science as well as a diverse range of colour theories, and how to employ them creatively. These concepts will be reinforced through specific practical exercises, and activities that will serve to d...
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Canadian Retailing
In this course, students are introduced to the multifaceted aspects of the Canadian fashion retailing industry, including types of retailers, retail organizations, fashion consumers, merchandise management and retail promotion.
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Illustrator
In this course students will learn the basic Adobe Illustrator concepts and tools necessary to begin now and further develop in later courses technical packages in fashion such as technical drawings, retail floor plans, promotional materials, catalogues.
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Sustainability
Sustainable fashion is becoming integral to fashion design philosophies, technologies, and trends in manageable sustainability. The fashion industry has recognized that being socially responsible should minimize the human impact on the environment and people. In this course, students conduct market research examining political, economic, social, and technological sustainability issues using PESTLE analytical techniques.
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Fashion Illustration
Fashion illustration is vital in the product development and marketing of apparel and accessories. Illustration represents the product visually: it is a form of stylized drawing that communicates not only an artistic representation but also a sense of style. In this course, students will learn the basics of this fashion art form: • Illustration as a form of fashion communication • Fashion illustration basics • Fashion body vs. human form &b...
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Fashion Marketing & Promotion
This course introduces students to basic fashion marketing principles. Fashion Marketing is defined as more than just “selling”: it is creating in the consumer the need and want to purchase fashion goods using a strategy of correct pricing and placement of goods, product offerings and promotional techniques targeted to the marketing segment.
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Fashion Writing
This course introduces students to print-based media and develops the skills to write promotional or reporting material for fashion by learning writing in the communication process, newspapers and fashion journalism, fashion advertising, and new media and blogs.
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Fashion History
This course is an overview of fashion history, its effect on contemporary trends and the marketing and merchandising of fashion apparel and accessories. Students learn the roles of costuming through the ages, the influence of costuming on designers, fashion as an evolutionary process, and costuming in fashion promotion, styling, product development, and visual display.
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Textiles
Students will explore natural and synthetic fibres, their characteristics and properties, the transition between fibre to fabric, fabric names and usages, care, labelling, life and handling, yarn production weaves, knits, printing, dyes, and new technologies in fibre production with an emphasis on 21st Century trends.
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Consumer Buying
This course explores the consumer buying process and the fashion industry: consumer behavior, internal and external factors influencing fashion consumers and consumer buying decisions.
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Fashion Forecasting
Fashion forecasting is a process that includes knowledge of changing colours and styles, lifestyles and consumer buying patterns, and varying methods of retailing merchandise. Students learn the components of fashion forecasting, decision-making in the apparel industry, the role of fashion forecasting in the textile apparel industries, forecasting techniques and technologies, and limitations of forecasting.
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Fashion Public Relations
Public Relations (PR) is the management and marketing function that links the fashion business with the buying public. Publicity is a communication method that tells the public about an apparel line, an emerging designer, a service, an event or an idea. In this course, students learn to generate effective PR in fashion through public relations, planning, budgeting and scheduling, news releases, media kits and announcements.
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Mathematics for Retail
In this course students will learn mathematical concepts and procedures and how they are applied to achieve profitable fashion retail merchandising.
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Visual Display and Merchandising
Visual display and merchandising is the artistic staging that makes the shopper stop, look and buy. All promotional marketing ends up with this point-of-sale display of merchandise. Students learn the role of visual merchandising in effective marketing, visual displays, planning, budgeting, mannequins, window and in-store displays.
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Brand Development and Management
This course introduces students to brand development and management within the fashion and related industries by exploring brand creation, perception, branding principles and techniques such as logos, colour, semiotics, retail spaces, web presence, promotion and marketing, product development, brand alliances and language. Students learn to identify a successful branding strategy and will propose a new branding strategy for an existing brand.
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Fashion Buying
Buying involves complex decision-making involving fashion forecasting, consumer buying trends, vendor selection and negotiation, pricing, sales, inventory record-keeping and ordering. This course introduces students to retail buying and the role of the buyer who makes daily merchandising decisions, the responsibilities of a buyer, fashion buying for retail outlets, applying marketing research, merchandising mix, buying plans, inventory control, and negotiation.
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Product Development
Product development is a process that begins with a design concept and follows through to production. In this course, students are introduced to technical drawings, technical specification packages, production boards, garment design elements and product organizational flows, all of which are integral to the manufacturing, marketing and merchandising of apparel.
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Fashion Promotion
Fashion shows produce to sell merchandise and are one of the most visual forms of promotion, making a statement to consumers at all levels: retailers, buyers, manufacturers, and designers down to the fashion-forward customer. In this course, students learn to plan and execute a fashion show as a promotional tool.
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Business Communication
Fashion is an industry that involves teamwork and working with diverse people making communication skills essential. This course focuses on written, verbal, and non-verbal communication skills as they apply to new media, resume writing, interview skills, customer service, the workplace, ethical and social responsibilities, and conflict resolution. Students learn communication using new media and negotiation and conflict resolution skills.
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Apparel Production
Fashion students gain knowledge of ready-to-wear apparel production: critical paths, quality control, mass production techniques, garment sequencing, assembly and costing, private labels, branding, and industry-standard product and garment specifications.
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E-Business
24/7 is a fashion business buzzword, and e-business provides the solution to satisfy this vital consumer need. This course focuses on the product, placement, pricing, promotion and how the consumer purchases in the cyber world.
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Global Marketing
In this course, students examine the movement of goods into the international marketplace from a Canadian perspective, focusing on the legal, political, socioeconomic and cultural aspects, the development of a marketing campaign, global marketing and the fashion business, and marketing strategies in the international marketplace.
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Portfolio
In this course, students will first develop a professional fashion portfolio demonstrating their skills in fashion marketing or merchandising.
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Fashion Styling
Fashion stylists are responsible for organizing and preparing people, accessories and garments worn by models at photoshoots. In creating “the look,” stylists must be up-to-date in all aspects of fashion forecasting. Students learn styling and trend forecasting, apparel advertising, theory, and practice while working on a photo shoot and magazine spread, which will become a portfolio piece.
Costs & Requirements
- High school graduation or equivalent (from an English language teaching institution) OR
- Mature student status (19 years of age upon starting classes and passing the college's admission test).
To learn more about tuition, click here.
For international student tuition, click here.
VCAD's Refund Policy abides by the Private Training Regulation of the Private Training Institutions Branch (PTIB) Private Training Act.
For more information, click here.
Check out and connect with some Alumni on LinkedIn.
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Noel Gabriel Ambrosio 2020
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Nikki Katouzian 2022
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Dryden Sereda 2022
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Madison Prangnell 2020
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Tuong Kim Thuy Nguyen 2020
Student Testimonials
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The instructors are really helpful, even outside school projects. They gave me a lot of advice about improving my skills as a graphic designer.
- Maricel Benjamin -
The most valuable part of the program is the one on one time with the teachers. They are always willing to go out of their way to make sure you understand what you are doing.
- Katrina Selkirk -
We have very important classes that are very useful in the industry. Really good hands-on and technical classes.
- Jae Esmane -
The teachers, being a part of the industry, have really amazing contacts with people working in the industry, and I have been able to take advantage of opportunities that I have received through VCAD.
- Alisha Rempel -
Coming to VCAD allowed me to have an international environment around me, international influences in my learning and international instructors. That was my goal because you can't learn design in a silo; I wanted influenc...
- Crystal Dauphinee -
VCAD was very hands-on. We were constantly working on our portfolio. I had classes with actual game designers - teachers who taught animations and were actual working as animators in the industry.
- Carlos Alejandro
Portfolio
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