NYU Stern’s New Take On Luxury Marketing

NYU Stern School of Business – Ethan Baron photo

DIRECTING STUDENTS TO THE RIGHT CLASSES FOR A CAREER IN LUXURY

Adding the “advisory track” is an opportunity for Stern faculty to direct interested students toward the right courses to prepare them for a career in the industry. Carr says there are about 100 students in the Luxury and Retail club and some 200 undergrads have approached him about the track.

Students following the advisory track will take core business courses in microeconomics, statistics, and finance. Carr says there are also some classes they think are essential to the industry, such as those in marketing, consumer behavior, supply chain management, and data-driven marketing.

“The prerequisites are skill-based things. Once you start moving out from there, it’s more and more focused on the particular industries,” Carr says.

Stern has a couple of different retail courses, a specific luxury marketing class as well, and a speaker series which Carr runs. “At NYU Stern, we have a really strong understanding of our unique geographic advantage. New York is the fashion capital of the world. Anyone who’s anyone is here, whether they’re an American company or an Asian company. If you don’t have a presence here, you won’t make it globally,” Carr says. “So given that everyone is here, we have a great opportunity to bring in speakers.”

The speakers will present for 15 to 20 minutes, and then students have the opportunity to ask questions, Carr says. He’ll bring in people from leading creative agencies in fashion to fashion industry lawyers, and says it’s very useful for students to have this kind of access.

Another class Carr teaches is an experiential learning course, where students launch a new brand, working with fashion houses in New York that want students to do projects for them. “It’s all about making connections in the industry,” Carr says.

NEW YORK ADVANTAGE: CLASSES AND INTERNSHIPS AT THE SAME TIME

Li has taken several electives in the luxury marketing track already, including the experiential seminar, and believes that they’ve prepared her well for her internships. “It really gave me a good sense of luxury retail operations, how the different functions play together to form the company and how the company would run on a day-to-day basis,” she says.

And she’s had success finding internships in the field as well. Her first was at a startup luxury brand, where she says she wanted to get as much experience as possible, by getting involved in all the different functions of the business, from production to sourcing to marketing, buying, and planning the collections. From there, she accepted a retail strategy internship for a larger company, and then an internship working in business operations at a publication with strong ties to luxury fashion.

“I would definitely say that NYU itself has so many opportunities that you can take advantage of,” she says. “I’ve been able to work at the same time as taking business classes, and I feel like it’s a rare opportunity to take classes and work at the same time. It’s making my college experience much more well-rounded and it’s preparing me much more going forward. I get to learn in the classroom and on the job, and that’s invaluable.”

DON’T MISS: POETS&QUANTS’ TOP 50 UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS SCHOOLS or THE MOST INNOVATIVE CHANGES IN UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS EDUCATION