12 Tips For Your Field Study

Hi Everybody!

After having done both a research project (during field study) and an internship (during summer field study), and having talked with my classmates,  maybe I can give some tips to future students to prepare your field study (seems challenging if you are not swedish!). This is not the first time I have been an intern, so the tips are built with all my previous experiences. Anyway, I hope it's useful!

1. Start thinking. Now! 
If you're thinking to be an intern or making some research, think that it's a process and you need preparation. Start with the preparation a.s.a.p. Follow the steps I recommend you and you will nail it!


2. There's No Perfect Position. There's A Perfect Position FOR YOU
Any of us have different skills and interests. So the position your classmate is dreaming of may not be the one you will enjoy the most. Find what your perfect position is. How?

3.  Analyse your profile 
What have you studied previously? What are your interests? What do you like to do? What do you dislike? Asking someone else is a good idea: a friend, a classmate with previous experience in fashion, any of your teachers...

4. Decide the profile of your ideal position
Don't put a name to this position, just write down what tasks within a fashion company you would be interested in doing (or what tasks you wouldn't like to do). This way you would be flexible to apply to different internships.The name the company gives the person that does some tasks vary from company to company.

5. Look for internships
You can use contacts from the school (look at the board in the 4th floor), web pages such as The Business of fashion careers,  www.fashionjobs.com or the web pages of the companies you would like to apply.  Useful info in Sweden: it is convenient to phone the company before applying, so you assure that your CV arrives to the correct person.

6. Read carefully the internship's description
Just by reading it carefully, you can adapt your own profile to the position. You'll have to fulfil the company demands to get an interview. So if for example they are asking a person who is bilingual in English, write your Cover Letter in English.

7. Prepare a template of your Cover Letter
Use this template for your cover letters, but personalise each one as well as your CV according to the profile demanded by the brand.

8. Prepare the interview
You got an interview! Now prepare it carefully. Collect info about the brand. Prepare some questions. Prepare the answer to some questions they can make you. This way you'll arrive more relaxed to the interview.

9. If you got an interview, they're interested in you
Relax. Don't worry about your lack of experience or if you will know the answers. Make your personality shine!

10. Keep contact after the interview
Leave a good impression. This time they got a person with a better profile for the position, but maybe in the future they can call you.

11. Plan your research
If you're doing a research project, plan your research AND plan your writing. The same to write your report of the field study. In my experience, writing the results of the research has been very challenging, because you get a lot of information and then you need to reflect that in a limited length and time. I took it as a learning experience for the thesis, but anyway it was difficult.

12. Learn from everybody and have fun!

Some days I have had the feeling I learnt things no lecture would teach me. I have learnt the importance of asking question and being curious: it's in your benefit and everybody loves to talk about their work. In my experience, it can also mean to start planning your career path and goals. And of course go everyday to work with a smile: your colleagues will be a source of both knowledge and fun!

Good luck!

The Difficulty of Comunicating the value of Textiles

Both my research (for the field study subject) and part of my internship (for the Summer field study) have been focused on analysing the knowledge gap between the industry and consumers around the characteristics of textiles, and what is the best strategy to communicate them effectively.

Terms such as "rapid absorption of liquid moisture with high drying rate" can be better understood as "absorbs moisture -dries quick" by everybody. This is common sense. But then why brands do sometimes things so complicated? Communicating properties becomes important now that new fabrics are developed due to the increase and volatility of the price of raw materials used by the textile industry. The luxury sector is specially sensible to this change, and the brands need to learn how to explain consumers the reasons for choosing these new materials and be clear about the reasons their prices are still high. The meaning of a brand for a consumer is linked to the brand’s relationship to people, places, things and other brands. Brand meaning develops from the interchange among three environments: the marketing, the individual and the cultural (Brioschi 2006). Digital Marketing is a good way of communicating fabrics' properties, because the followers of the brand (who would be more willing to buy), can receive messages regarding the properties in a regular basis. So they will learn these properties by repetition. From the brand's point of view, using this method is less expensive than other methods. 

As a case study, when I developed the Digital Marketing strategy for Pyrates, a brand of high-end joggings, the main objective was to create a virtual social community around the brand, what we defined as "pyratesworld", using Social Media and other digital channels.

The Digital Marketing Institute defines digital marketing as “the use of digital technologies to create an integrated, targeted and measurable communication which helps to acquire and retain customers while building deeper relationships with them” (Smith, 2007; cited in Wymbs, 2011).

The internet has its own social interactive codes, that can vary from country to country and from lifestyle to lifestyle. “Lifestyle refers to a pattern of consumption reflecting a person’s choices of how he or she spends time and money, but in many cases it also refers to the attitudes and values attached to these behavioral patterns” (Solomon et al., 2006). Studying our consumers' lifestyles helps brands to know what are their life choices, as well as attitudes and values. In fact, I would say that in planning a digital marketing campaign, monitoring our target becomes as important (if not more) as thinking what we want to communicate. 

In my case, thinking in how to better communicate the properties of fabrics has become a "work in progress" & "learn by doing" task. There's no secret recipe for brands. It's just collect info, try, monitor and if you did something wrong, try again. Good news: monitoring becomes almost immediate, making fashion digital marketing challenging and exciting at the same time! I guess you know what part of the industry I want to develop my career in...

References:

Brioschi, A. 2005. Is luxury selling Dreams? The Role of Advertisement in Shaping Luxury Brands’ Meaning, in J.E. Schroeder, M. Salzer-Mörling (eds.) Brand Culture. London: Routledge

Solomon, M.; Bamoosy, G., Askegaard,S. and Hogg, M. 2006. Consumer Behaviour. A European Perspective. Essex: Prentice Hall

Wymbs, C. (2011). Digital marketing: The time for a new “academic major” has arrived. Journal of Marketing Education [online] Available at: http://jmd.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/02/20/0273475310392544.abstract (Last Accessed 31-08-2015)

End of internship at Ellos

Hi everyone!

Last week, my internship at Ellos came to and end…It was an amazing experience and I am really happy I was able to be there for 5 months. Besides the fact that I could use all my knowledge in design and textiles, I was also able to learn so many things…It feels like i’ve done almost everything related to  prints, sketches, spec sheets, fits, embroideries, qualities, trends and I  also learned a lot about the magalog, campaigns and communication with suppliers. I tried to get as much information as possible while I was there and now it´s high time to start writing the field study report…It´s gonna be mainly focused on the Ellos magalog, the process of putting together all the “pieces”, starting with the design department- which is the part I´m most focused on-  until it reaches the marketing department. It is an interesting topic and it´s something that is not so common among textile companies…

Ellos is a company that is constantly developing and growing and I feel really grateful for this opportunity. It was an unique experience, with great achievements and loads of knowledge!!! I loved it J

Mirela