Episode Details

I'm talking to somebody who works for the biggest supermarket in the UK. Hi Alan. Hello there.

我正在和一位在英国最大连锁超市工作的人交谈。嗨，艾伦。你好。

So, who do you work for? I work for Tesco, which is a British company. It's got supermarkets and stores all over the world. We've got something like 4,000 stores and we are the biggest by market share in the UK.

那么，你是为哪家公司工作的呢？我在乐购（Tesco）工作，这是一家英国公司，在世界各地都有超市和门店。我们大约有4000家门店，在英国的市场占有率是最高的。

Fantastic. What is your job title? So my job title is Technical Director of the Clothing Division, which is branded F&F. What do you do exactly? So my job really is to help the buyers who choose the products for our customers to get the right quality and to buy from the right factories all over the world.

太棒了。你的职位是什么？我的职位是服装事业部的技术总监，我们的服装品牌叫 F&F。那你具体是做什么的呢？我的工作主要是协助采购人员，为顾客选择合适质量的产品，并从全球合适的工厂进行采购。

And those buyers are responsible for selecting the products for the UK, Republic of Ireland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. And so do these buyers obviously then, they go abroad? They do go abroad. They go to the markets themselves to understand what's the difference between somebody in Hungary and somebody in Republic of Ireland.

这些采购人员负责为英国、爱尔兰共和国、捷克、斯洛伐克、波兰和匈牙利选择产品。那么他们显然会出国吗？是的，他们会出国，亲自去当地市场，了解匈牙利消费者和爱尔兰消费者之间有什么不同。

So they don't sell the same clothing in those supermarkets? Roughly the same, but there are differences. For example, in Central Europe, school children do not wear school uniforms, whereas in the UK they do. So we have to make sure that we're buying the products appropriate for the country.

所以在这些超市里卖的衣服并不完全一样吗？大体相同，但还是有差异。比如在中欧地区，学生不穿校服，而在英国学生是要穿校服的。因此，我们必须确保采购的产品适合当地国家的需求。

Where do you fit in then? So the buyers know what the customer wants and what me and my team try to help the buyers do is select the right factory in the right country to make the right product. So for example, shirts can be made in China, in Bangladesh, in