We sat down with Rafiqul Islam, who’s spent the last twenty years negotiating with buyers across Europe, the US, and increasingly, in the last few years, the Middle East. He started as a junior merchandiser handling a single line for a mid-size knitwear factory outside Dhaka, and now runs merchandising for a group with three units. We asked him to talk candidly about what’s actually changed in buyer negotiations over two decades — not the textbook version, the real one.

You’ve been negotiating with buyers since the early 2000s. What did a negotiation actually look like back then, compared to now?

Honestly? Much simpler, in a way that sounds almost strange to say out loud now. Back then, it was mostly about one thing — price. You’d get a target from the buyer, you’d counter, they’d counter back, maybe two or three rounds, and you’d land somewhere in the middle. The buyer’s main question was “can you make this at this price, on this date.” That was basically the whole conversation.

There wasn’t much talk about compliance audits, sustainability reporting, worker welfare documentation, any of that. Buyers cared about it, I’m sure, somewhere in their company, but it almost never came up directly in my conversations as a merchandiser. My job was price, quality, delivery. Three things. Now it’s price, quality, delivery, compliance, sustainability, transparency, social audits, and sometimes a fifth or sixth thing depending on the buyer. The negotiation table got a lot more crowded.

Was that shift gradual, or was there a moment you remember it changing?

There were two moments, really. The first was after Rana Plaza. That changed everything, not gradually — almost overnight. Suddenly every buyer wanted proof, real proof, of building safety, fire safety, structural integrity. Before that, I’d say compliance was maybe ten percent of any conversation. After that, it became something you had to address before price even came up. A buyer wouldn’t even discuss numbers with you until they trusted your factory was safe.

The second moment was more recent, the last five, six years maybe — this shift toward sustainability and transparency. Where does your cotton come from, what’s your water usage, can you prove your wage compliance, that kind of thing. It’s still building, I don’t think it’s finished changing yet. But it’s become a real part of getting an order now, not just a checkbox.

Do you think buyers negotiate harder now, or softer, compared to twenty years ago?

Harder, in a different way. Twenty years ago, a buyer would push hard on price, and that was basically their only tool. Now buyers have more tools. They can push on price, sure, but they can also push on compliance timelines, on sustainability reporting, on payment terms, on order splitting across multiple factories to reduce their own risk. The negotiation has more dimensions now, which sounds like it should make it more complex to manage, and it is, but honestly, it also gives you, as a merchandiser, more places to actually create value beyond just cutting your price.

That’s something I try to teach younger merchandisers now. If price is the only thing you’re negotiating on, you’ve already limited yourself to one lever. There are more levers available today than there used to be, if you know how to use them.

What’s an example of using a different lever, instead of just price?

I had a buyer maybe six, seven years ago, pushing hard on price for a big order. I could have cut my margin to match a competitor’s number, and honestly, at that time, I probably would have needed to. Instead, I offered something different — I told them I’d guarantee a faster sample turnaround on their next three styles, because I knew, from working with them before, that sample delays were actually their biggest internal headache, more than price ever was.

They took that deal. Full price, faster samples. It worked because I’d actually listened, over a couple of years, to what frustrated them, not just what they said in the negotiation room. Price was never really their only problem. It just looked that way from the outside.

That sounds like it requires a long relationship. What about with a completely new buyer, where you don’t have that history yet?

That’s harder, I won’t pretend it isn’t. With a new buyer, you don’t know their real pain points yet, so you’re negotiating a bit blind in the beginning. My advice to juniors is, in the first year with any new buyer, spend as much energy learning what actually matters to them as you spend trying to win the best price. Ask questions. Not just about the order — about their business, their customers, what keeps them up at night. Most merchandisers don’t ask enough questions. They’re so focused on defending their number that they miss the chance to actually understand the person across the table.

Has technology changed how negotiations happen — email versus in-person, that kind of thing?

Enormously, and I have mixed feelings about it, honestly. Twenty years ago, a lot of real negotiation happened face to face, or at least over a phone call. You could hear tone. You could tell when a buyer was actually firm on a number versus just testing you. Now, so much of it is email, sometimes WhatsApp, sometimes a quick video call that’s scheduled for fifteen minutes and actually lasts eight.

It’s faster, I’ll give it that. But you lose something. It’s much easier to misread an email than a face. I’ve seen younger merchandisers take a short, blunt email personally, when the buyer probably just typed it quickly between meetings and didn’t mean anything by the tone at all. And the opposite happens too — someone reads friendliness into an email that was actually a firm rejection, just phrased politely.

Do you have a rule for reading buyer communication, then?

I tell my team, when in doubt, ask for a call. Not for every small thing, but if an email feels ambiguous, or if something important is being decided, get on a call. Five minutes of actual conversation clears up more than twenty minutes of back-and-forth email. I still believe that, even now, after all these years of everything moving toward text and chat.

What’s the biggest mistake you see junior merchandisers make in negotiations today?

Agreeing too fast. This is the one I see most often. A buyer pushes back on price, and instead of taking a moment, understanding why, asking a clarifying question, the junior merchandiser just… agrees. Cuts the price, right there, in the moment, because they’re afraid of losing the order or afraid of looking difficult.

I understand the fear. I had it too, when I started. But agreeing too fast teaches the buyer something about you, whether you mean it to or not. It teaches them your first number was never really your real number, that there’s always more room if they just push a little harder. And once a buyer learns that about you, they’ll push every single time, on every single order, because you taught them it works.

So what should a junior merchandiser do instead, in that moment?

Pause. Even just verbally — “let me check this and come back to you” — even if you already sort of know your answer. It buys you a few minutes to actually think, instead of reacting emotionally in the room. And when you do come back, don’t just cut the price. Explain what’s actually driving your number, if you can, or ask what’s driving theirs. Sometimes a buyer’s target price is based on outdated information, an old fabric cost, a competitor’s number that’s no longer accurate. You can’t correct that if you just fold immediately.

Has your own negotiating style changed over twenty years?

A lot, yes. Early on, I was very defensive, I think. I saw negotiation almost as a fight I needed to win, protect my number at all costs, don’t give an inch. That worked sometimes, and it damaged relationships other times, in ways I didn’t fully understand until years later, when I noticed certain buyers just… stopped reaching out with new styles, quietly, without ever really explaining why.

Now I think of it much more as problem-solving, together with the buyer, not against them. Their target price is usually based on something real — their own customer’s budget, their own margin requirements. My cost is based on something real too. The negotiation isn’t really about who wins. It’s about finding where those two real things can actually meet, honestly, without either side pretending.

Do you think that mindset shift is something that comes naturally with experience, or something junior merchandisers could learn faster if someone actually taught them?

I think it can be taught, definitely, faster than I learned it myself, which mostly happened through making mistakes and slowly noticing the pattern. That’s actually part of why I do these kinds of conversations now, training sessions, mentoring younger staff. I wish someone had explained this to me directly in my first two years, instead of me figuring it out through, I don’t know, probably fifteen years of trial and error.

Last question — after twenty years, what’s the one thing about buyer negotiation that hasn’t changed at all?

Trust. Everything else changed — the tools, the topics, the pace, how fast a deal moves, what buyers care about beyond price. But trust is still the actual currency underneath all of it. A buyer who trusts you will forgive a late correction, will give you the benefit of the doubt on a tough week, will come back to you first with their next order. A buyer who doesn’t trust you will nickel and dime you on every single point, forever, no matter how good your price is.

Twenty years ago, I would have told you the most important skill in this job is knowing your costing cold. And that’s still true, you have to know your numbers. But if I’m honest, looking back, the merchandisers I respect most, the ones who built real, lasting relationships with their buyers, weren’t necessarily the ones with the sharpest pricing. They were the ones the buyer trusted completely. That hasn’t changed in twenty years, and I don’t think it ever will.