Everywhere you look at the moment, the glamorous and great seem to be clamouring to raise their profile by getting involved with the retail industry. Kylie launched a new swimwear collection at H&M, Lily Allen dresses at New Look and Kate Moss sending the media into overdrive by ‘designing’ her own range at Topshop.

In fact, with The Spice Girls fronting the new Tesco ads, it seems the ultimate celeb accessory is now to be linked to a famous High Street store. But this is not exactly new. Celebrities have played a huge part in shaping consumer tastes since advertising began and now work hand-in-hand with the retail industry to place the latest products at the top of everyone’s wish list.

How can anyone forget David Beckham’s smouldering endorsement of Police sunnies or Sharon Osborne’s appreciation for ASDA, but what many people don’t realise is that stars like these are merely the icing on the cake. It’s the three million people working in the UK retail industry that are the most important ingredients.

Whether you start working on the shop floor of a local supermarket or enter the industry as a graduate trainee in a leading fashion house, choosing a career in retail now means becoming part of a dynamic and fast-paced environment that offers a real opportunity to make your mark in whatever area that interests you. Each of these areas contains many different job roles, but all offer great opportunities for the right people to progress and succeed. What’s more, retail has the advantage of allowing both flexible working and the opportunity to specialise in a specific area of interest, such as food, gaming, films, fashion or sport.  Just look at employees in Waterstones, for example. It is fair to say that, for most staff, literature is a passion and retail gives them the opportunity to work in a specialised area that truly interests them. The same is true for many employees working in HMV, retail is not a refuge for the qualification-less, it is an environment that allows people to work with the products they want amongst like-minded people. In turn, their hard work is rewarded with fast career progression, early responsibility, great salaries and, of course, staff perks that are to die for. With over 3 million people working in retail in the UK (think Primark, Topshop, HMV) the variety of roles is enormous and the sector has created more jobs in the last five years than any other. This means there are career opportunities in any one of the many departments that work together to ensure that the latest products are in the right place, at the right time and at the right price, including buying, operations, merchandising, design, human resources, IT and marketing.

In fact, you only have to look at the rise of online retailing or ‘etailing’ to see how dynamic retail has become and why it is proving to be such a magnet to the fashion-conscious glitterati. From initially being written off as a ‘fad’, shopping online has become as normal as visiting a bricks and mortar store and it is predicted that, within the next four years, etailing will be responsible for over 30% of all UK sales alone - a staggering £75 billion per year. That means a lot of celebrity endorsement money for some of our favourite faces and explains why retailers like Sainsbury’s are prepared to spend a million a year on getting Jamie Oliver to front their business. But while these luminaries build their profiles, think about your own career. Could you imagine yourself working as an international buyer, designing shop fronts as a visual merchandiser or being a website editor for a High Street brand? It doesn’t matter what you studied, where your interests lie or what skills you currently have, if you are shopping around for an interesting and rewarding career…retail might just be the perfect fit.For further information on careers in retail, visit http://www.skillsmartretail.com/

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