Combine your passion for trendsetting style with in-demand business skills with the online Associate of Science (AS) in Fashion Merchandising degree from Southern New Hampshire University. This online fashion degree could be the start of an exciting and rewarding career. SNHUs 2-year fashion degree online focuses on the application of retailing and fashion merchandising theory. You'll take courses in color theory, textiles, retailing, and marketing. You'll also gain a strong foundation of business knowledge that can serve you well across many industries. With a fashion degree, you'll be prepared for entry-level careers in buying, visual merchandising, sales, and vendor relations in retail or wholesale settings.

Learn how to:

- Apply basic color theory to fashion merchandising

- Apply basic psychological principles to sales techniques

- Identify product life cycle merchandising in the fashion industry

- Analyze differences between retail and wholesale environments

- Illustrate how business and fashion decisions relate to industry tech

Want to continue your education? You don't have to worry about applying to another school. SNHU also offers a bachelors-level fashion merchandising degree. An associate degree in fashion merchandising can help you combine a love of fashion trends with a business-focused education. Attending a 2-year fashion marketing school can help you get started faster in a variety of fashion careers. SNHU's fashion degree online curriculum can help you build a solid foundation in merchandising and retailing principles and practices.

"Fashion merchandising courses are designed and taught by practicing fashion and retail professionals, ensuring you have access to up-to-date industry insight. SNHUs degree in fashion merchandising prepares our students for the business side of fashion," said Meleena Eaton, associate dean. "

Through the combination of discipline-specific courses as well as foundational business courses in accounting, marketing, and HR our graduates are prepared to work in the fashion industry. Because fashion merchandising careers require some key business, marketing, and sales skills, your fashion merchandising program includes a strong foundation of business education.

Youll explores a variety of business skills and practices, including:

- Financial accounting

- Managerial accounting

- Information technology

- Marketing

- Sales promotion

- Human relations

You'll also take a number of general education courses as part of your degree, which can help you build key career soft skills, including communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and analysis. In your fashion merchandising courses, you'll gain a broad foundation of trends and styling combined with courses designed to teach you the business side of the fashion industry. You'll explore the basic principles of design, color theory, balance, and texture and how they relate to advertising and visual merchandising. You can also practice fabric recognition by studying textiles in more detail and analyzing fibers.

In an introductory fashion merchandising course, you can learn the fashion principles and procedures used in planning, selecting, pricing, and selling fashion products in retail stores, catalogs, and online. You'll expand on this learning later in your fashion degree, focusing on the influence of merchandise planning and purchasing on retail profit. You'll get hands-on experience analyzing profit and loss statements. And you can review the factors that influence a retailer's overall financial performance. Your online fashion merchandising courses can also help you gain a better understanding of the basics of retailing. These include store layout, merchandising, pricing, and the challenges for retailers in today's environment.

Fashion marketing degree courses will cover the skills needed to promote fashion brands and products. You can learn the principles of sales promotion in the retail sector, including advertising, visual merchandising, personal selling, and special events planning. You'll apply your coursework learning to creating a sales promotion plan, including a major special event, to get a key hands-on learning experience. A required fashion merchandising internship can help you get even more valuable real-world experience. The internship must be US-based and must relate to the way apparel products and apparel accessories are marketed and distributed. You can work with the SNHUs career advising team and fashion program coordinator to find the internship that's right for you.

"The internship course that is offered at SNHU has given students the chance to work with some of the best retailers in the country in some of the most amazing fashion experiences," said Dr. Jessica Rogers, senior associate dean of business programs at SNHU. "Students have worked with the development of wholesale sales in corporate offices, shadowed department store management, and used digital technology to help promote sales for social media."

For Yamel Trigo '18, an internship with a women's clothing boutique in Miami was an important step on her journey to working in fashion. Trigo, who has quadriplegia and uses a wheelchair, said she was nervous when she reached out to the boutique on Instagram to ask if they could take on an intern. But she got a boost of confidence when she not only landed the internship but also got to experience firsthand the marketing, customer service, merchandising, and sales strategies that go into owning and operating a retail shop. She was able to get experience with helping customers, creating sales flyers for the shop, and even attending buying events, giving her a hands-on application for her coursework learning.

"I learned a lot about what the buyers have to do during these buying trips and how long they take, depending on how much merchandise is available to look at, Trigo said. We were there for about four hours, but it was worth it because I got to see a glimpse of what I hope to be doing in the future."

Expanding access to quality higher education means removing the barriers that may stand between you and your degree. That's why you can apply at any time and get a decision within days of submitting all required materials:

- Completed free undergraduate application

- Prior transcripts, which we can retrieve at no cost to you

- Test scores are not required as part of your application Acceptance decisions are made on a rolling basis throughout the year for our 6 (8-week) undergraduate terms.

$150 Graduation Fee, Course Materials ($ varies by course)