Shopping is a Job?!? Kate Oldham Talks Job Hunting and Friend Finding

Shopping is a job? Kate Oldham lives the age-old dream as a Senior Vice President and General Merchandise Manager for Saks Fifth Avenue, finding the perfect products in Beauty, Jewelry, and Home just so they can go from their shelves to your front door. She unpacks what it was like to move to New York to start a new life in her late 20’s and offers advice to any and all who dream of being retail royalty.

On my vanity, displayed proudly amongst the empty water glasses and late-night jewelry discards sits a witch's arsenal of gold and glass beauty potions. Some, like the lifesaving skincare routine of yesteryear, are newer acquisitions, while the other pink perfumes and red lipstick cases are well marred from years of use. How thrilled was I as a middle school tot to learn that the well-dressed woman at pick up not only worked at New York’s beauty promised land, but also found herself overcome with product samples and lacked a daughter to help her share the load? “She buys more lipstick than any woman in the world,” my mother whispered to me as if it were secret and I pocketed the phrase. Now she’s buying more than lipstick. As the Senior Vice President of General Merchandise Management at Saks, Kate Oldham is the final word in what stocks Saks shelves for beauty and jewelry. But rising above the sales floor took more than a ride on the flagship’s escalator. 

Why did you come to New York?

I knew I didn't want to be in St Louis, I never wanted to be in St Louis. I always wanted to live in a big city and New York offered this amazing opportunity that no other city offers. It's a small town and a big town all at the same time, you know your neighborhood, you know your neighbors. You run into people from all over the world, and you can run into friends just walking down the street. It was a crossroads of everything I was looking for.

Did you have a plan when you came to the city or were you just flying by the seat of your pants?

I didn't have a plan. Not at all. I was actually in my late twenties when I moved to New York and I had just broken up with my long-term boyfriend. I had a Bachelor of Science in economics and I had an MBA in marketing, and I had no idea what to do. But I didn't have the luxury of a financial support system so I had to get a job. 

And that job was at Saks.

I was actually looking for a job in marketing for radio or television, but at the time I just needed a job to make rent. So I started working on the floor while I was looking for other jobs and then I found out that there was this whole organization and training program for people who wanted to work in retail. It wasn't even a career I knew about. I think one of the things that young people now have a much better sense of is the scope of all the opportunities out there. When I was young, the only jobs you knew about were the ones your parents did or the ones you learned about in college. How was I going to know about a buying career if I never knew anybody who was in buying?

When you started working on the sales floor, what were the green flags that made you decide that this was a company you wanted to stay with?

First of all, people really liked me and when you're looking for happiness you're looking for people who make your life more enjoyable. I liked working with people, I liked the fast pace of retail. And I got to learn about buying. I learned about this whole world that I never knew about. I already loved fashion so this opened up a door that I had never seen behind. Now, I don't think I've ever been a very strategic person when it came to my career— if there's something in front of me that's interesting to me I'm like, “Okay I'll do this and if it doesn't fit me, I'll find something else.” But there was just such a huge opportunity for career advancement, so it all seemed very appealing to me.

Do you think you would’ve taken the marketing dream job once you’d decided to stay at Saks?
 

No, I stopped looking for another job pretty fast and made do with what I had. I didn't find the dream job in media, but I’d been interested in was media-buying so it wasn't very far from what I was doing at Saks. I looked very hard in the beginning and then it became quite clear that I had an opportunity here so I just shifted all of my energy into getting the training job at Saks. And as a young person, I was having a lot of fun, I was enjoying my social life, I didn’t want to keep looking for something else. 

Was your social life linked to your career or was your circle more of a conglomerate of different people around the city?

I made a huge group of friends to the church that I went to, Saint Ignatius. I made a lot of friends that way. And at the time, New York was very inclusive so somebody would invite you to a party, you would meet somebody else, and then they would ask you to another party— it was a very, very social time in New York. Everybody was having parties all the time and you just kept getting invited to things.

Do you have a favorite part of your night out that you remember?

I would say it was with all my Texas friends. I had a big group of Brits and a big group of Texas friends-- they intermingled but it was a huge group of people.  We went to a rooftop party with a band and a bunch of people we didn't know. It was classic. I used to walk down the streets in New York at night when I’d first moved and see into people's windows and think: “Well if everybody is having a party, I better start meeting people just to get invited.” And then I went to this rooftop and realized that I did have a group of friends at this party with hundreds of people and we were all just dancing and listening to the band. It was fabulous.

So you had a group of friends from church, a group of Texans, a group of—.

Brits.

Sounds like the best dating pool I've ever heard of. 

It was great.

With all the innovations in social media and technology, what do you think has changed in New York from when you were looking for your place in the city to today?

You know, something I admire is the nobility and the flexibility of young people today to try and do new things. Staying at one job is not an objective for them. I was not that ambitious I think, so I admire people who are ambitious and fearless about trying new things until they find something that fits. And with social media, I have to say, I think I admire people who aren't on it because I think they are freer than people who are. I think it's very hard now to be out and not register that you're out that. You can't be in the moment, you have to make sure you get that picture, just to say, “Not only was I enjoying myself, but I can prove it.” I feel that there are many people I admire who don't participate, and I wonder if they're just happier.

Now, I know you went to business school, which is an option that I know a lot of young people consider after working for a year or two. What was that choice like and would you make that choice again?

Well, I didn't know what I was going to do. I had originally wanted to go to law school, but after I’d worked for a lawyer for a year, I realized I hated it. So I knew I wasn’t going to be a lawyer, but I didn't have an ambition for anything else. And then somebody else had said they were going to get an MBA and I thought "Oh, I'll get an MBA too!" This is how I have always lived my life. “That sounds good, I'll go to it.” So I did just that. If you're struggling to know what you want to do, giving yourself time and learning something new is never a bad idea. It would be worse, in my mind, for people to be sitting around idly saying, “I don't know what I'm going to do.” If you go to school, maybe you'll discover something along the way. But if I were doing it again I would have worked in a career for a few years and then done an MBA. I would've benefited much more from having some real-life experiences first.

 What do you think young people should be looking for when it comes to the job market?

The world is much more fluid now than it has been because there is so much movement in business right now. With this sort of “great resignation” happening, it's an opportunity for somebody who maybe doesn't have experience in a certain area to land a job they normally wouldn't be able to. And don’t be afraid of entry-level positions. Working on the sales floor was never my objective— I even lied on the application and didn't say I had an MBA because I didn't want them to think I was overqualified. But the biggest thing I would advise is: if it isn't a fit, don't stay. Look for something else. You'll be miserable and usually, your employer will be miserable with you because if it’s not a good fit, you won’t do your best work.

What would you say to someone who wants to do what you are doing you now?

I think if you want to be in retail, having worked in retail is important, in a traditional sense. Now, my job is new because we are two companies: one that focuses on digital and one that focuses on bricks-and-mortar. I oversee the buying of Jewelry, Beauty, and Home for both, but my main focus is on digital. I don't have a digital background and at my age, I am learning new things every day. I would say that if you’re looking to go into retail and do what I’m doing, you have to have some digital knowledge, but it's more important to understand what retail is. Whether you’re shopping in-store or online: it’s still about the customer. It's still making choices for your customers. And now we’ll hire people who've never worked in a store. I think about two years ago we wouldn't have hired anybody who hadn't had any retail experience, but now things are a little different. But you still need some sort of customer-facing experience to be a really good retailer. That way you can really think like a customer.

I know it's very occupation-dependent but there's always this question that I'm asking myself: whether it's more important to have experience or education?

I will take a hard-working, above-average person over a brilliant person any day of the week. If you’re hardworking, you’ll figure it out, while the brilliant might miss the obvious. There's a reason why there are different types of jobs for different types of people. There are theoretical jobs, there are people who can sit in academia and talk about it. But if you have a disgruntled customer in front of you, you've got to be able to handle that in retail. Education is great when you get that A, but it’s also not the same as real life.

What parts of your workday today bring you joy? What makes you happy in the office?

I love knowing that what we’ve bought, what we’ve made decisions about, sells. Watching the team come up with new ideas, deliver them, and be successful in them brings me joy. Seeing people try new things and have them not work also brings me joy because I see that that means they pushed themselves a little further than where they were comfortable. I love working with my vendor partners and solving problems. I love all of that and that’s why this job has kept me employed at the same company for over 25 years because every day is new, it’s multifaceted, it’s super fast-paced, there’s always a list of things to do. All of those things still make me want to get up in the morning and turn on my computer or go to the office. I love the people I work with, I enjoy the interaction. I love making something out of nothing. Seeing a brand, bringing it to the store, and making it big— that gives me a really big sense of accomplishment.

Do you have any words of comfort or advice for 20-somethings still figuring things out?

I didn’t start working at Saks until my late 20’s. So if you haven’t figured it out by 23, I wouldn’t worry and I wouldn’t panic. Just start trying new things and start working. I don’t care if you’re working retail or bartending, I think it’s very important to be self-sufficient, and getting a job gives you that sense of doing something on your own. It gives you the confidence to climb to the next level and the next level and the next level. I tried 4 or 5 or 6 jobs before I found that I love working in retail. The wind blew me where it blew me and I tried things and when that didn’t work it blew me somewhere else. I did not have a five-year plan, I have never had a five-year plan. I am a reluctant executive meaning that I got a job and all I wanted to do was do a good job at that job. And then when somebody said what about the next level I said “Ok well, what would that look like?” At 23 you don’t have to worry, you have all the time in the world. And you don’t have to have a calling to work. You don’t have to have a calling to retail or fashion or media. Just trying new things is really a great start because eventually, something will fit. And these past couple of years have been super challenging for everybody, I admire people who maybe couldn’t get a job and instead went and got an extra degree. But I’m a big believer in just working. Getting a job, putting in the hours, feeling the pain of getting up early, not enjoying every day, because then you start really deciding what’s important to you. And I don’t think you can do that until you try it. As long as you're doing things you're moving forward. It’s when you're not doing anything that's a problem. When you're just like, “I don't know what to do,” why don’t you just go and get a job at Starbucks and then maybe you'll say, “Oh, this is really interesting” or maybe you'll hate it and say, “Okay, I did it for six months.” Just try things. Try things.