Event preparing at Agency V

The focus during the past days relied in working with activities for a swimwear brand. The brand is offering swim shorts for men, mostly focusing on fun and colourful prints. The brand will host an event during the summer and I have been searching for a suitable guest list for the event, in able to create a mixture of guests that suits the brand, and preparing invitations. Additionally I have focused on contacting suitable brand-ambassadors, meaning men that can represent the brand in different media channels. It has been interesting to prepare for event, as I now have a greater understanding about the process behind it. 

All the good things come to an end.

Hej hello!

As the title suggest, my internship has come to an end.
It was such a great journey, from moving to another country to working in a small start-up team, meeting challenges and testing my own abilities.

I would like to use this last post to reflect on the outcomes of this internship.

Working as a fashion intern in the combyne company which developed and launched the fashion app as a creative tool was not only a lot of fun but also very challenging. The tasks I had were very diverse which gave me an insight into every segment of the company and the product and I enjoyed that to the maximum. Knowing the product gave me better working skills, less mistakes and very good time usage. I enjoyed working with import of the fashion items from different brands into the app, I especially enjoyed creating Style Lists for users and educating them and giving them inspiration on how to work with fashion. I met a big challenge working in the Influencer Marketing and realizing how hard it is to work with no budget, especially when your product is not something wearable or usable (expect virtually). I found marketing of such a product very challenging and two months were not enough to get completely into it and figure it out but they were quite enough to understand that fashion is not only a wearable item or a service. I expected from internship to be challenging and motivating and that is what I got. It was a great opportunity to be a part of a fast growing company and growing and learning with the team was great, I feel like I grew my fashion sense, get an insight in many different brands and styles, learnt how to communicate with influencers and also learnt how to present and market a fashion app.

All in all, this internship has provided me so much more knowledge, working skills and responsibility. I tested my own working habits, my own knowledge, interests and happily confirmed that I fashion is my world.

I experienced how it is to work in a start-up, how it is to work with little or no budget when creativity takes its place and I learnt how to work in a small team and with a virtual product which was amazing. If there would be another internship, I would love to challenge myself in a bigger, established company for a change...

...and until then...

Have a lovely day!

Andrea Simunic

Two weeks till holidays

Over the last few weeks things have started to settle down a little. I finished the project that I had been hired to do two weeks ago and now find myself helping out with developing Houdini's next step in sustainable action. We have started to recieve responses for Houdini's planetary boundaries and some of them are golden. Here is an example. When asked the amount of energy needed per kg to process wool fibre, the supplier responded "no, only need rain and sunshine". A very interesting point  but if I may add the sheep probably need some food as well. Needless to say we had to recontact them and had to clarify the question with them. It takes a huge amount of time to get any info related to sustainability from the suppliers and manufacturers and often their are a few misunderstandings (but we are used to that thanks to group works).
My new project has been to help Houdini develop another questionnaire that would hopefully limit the possible misunderstandings and get more valuable information. It is crazy to think that only two weeks are left. I have loved every moment of being in Stockholm and experiencing Sweden in the Summer. My tenure here will end on midsummer and I am very much looking forward to that as well.

Much love,

Andrew

Training materials

For the past three weeks, I’ve been writing training materials. I’m not sure, if that’s what I’d call them myself, but that’s what they’re known as in the company. They’re basically documents where I write about different categories of accessories – for example, hats, scarves, gloves, belts, jewellery, etc. With the help of WGSN and looking at our company’s collections, I put together texts about each accessory category for each of our brands. The final text is supposed to help the sales people in our stores sell the merchandise. Basically, the texts are similar to marketing texts, I talk about what the main trends of the season are, which colours, patterns and textures are most popular and how to wear the accessories and combine them with garments from the collections. It has been an interesting assignment, but I am truly happy I managed to finish all of the training materials by now. It was not an easy task at time – for example when talking about hats, gloves and scarves where fur is dominating the trends and is used on all of them in the collections of four brands. So I was supposed to figure out how to talk about the fur trend and sell it in 12 different ways, when all I really wanted to say about hats, scarves and gloves was that if you want to be warm during the winter, you’d better buy them. I was pretty fed up with trend talks by the end of that assignment, but at least I am very well informed on the accessory trends of A/W 16/17 now.

Johanna

Pressday at Agency V

After my third week at the internship I had the pleasure to take part in the pressday for the upcoming autumn winter 2016 collections. This means that the showroom is open during a whole day for journalists, stylists, and influencers to come here and look at the next seasons collections. In that way they will know what we have available in the showroom and what they can borrow for their upcoming editorial works. It was great for me in able to meet the collaborators that the agency works with, and also get to know more about the dynamics of running a showroom. It was a successful day in many ways, as even though that seven showrooms had pressday the same day we managed to get visits from everyone that we expected. I am very happy to have ben a part of this day and I believe that this day will be one of the greatest memories from my time at Agency V.

Finishing up ... Almost

Hej hej from Swedish Eco,

10 weeks of my internship passed by like nothing. Now, towards the last two official weeks, I am trying to finish up projects but that seems quite challenging, considering how much a start-up is depending on others to be on time.

I am finally receiving the second samples for our product extension project, but as always in such a young brand - everything can go right, everything can go wrong. So I am very excited to see the product results and hope the project can be continued in time...
As mentioned in my previous post I've been busy with Sales and Social Meda the last weeks while waiting for our new samples and in order to get the word about our underwear spread. It's great to see how bloggers and magazines start to approach us for cooperations - something I am super interested in to organize! (Here I recognize again why I studied communications before)

Also: Did you notice HOW MANY bloggers are switching towards eco-friendly, slow fashion nowadays? I see myself getting more and more into a more conscious lifestyle and almost getting bored by the usual fast-fashion bloggers as it seems they ignore the big movement of the industry. This, of course, also binds me more to our own brand as I get a great feeling for good quality underwer that was produced ethically. At this point, I cannot see myself working for a fast-fashion brand anymore to be honest. A great change as I think, as it defines further where I want to go!

My plans to stay with the brand continue - So I will work for them still after my intership, a great opportunity next to the studies of course! And fun too, as I will organize some more mini-photoshoots, get creative with the Social Media and follow what I love most - Creating visual communication content :)

Hope you all have an amazing summer!!! xx
Madeleine

Getting to know the company

On the third week of my internship I attended information days for new workers. This is something that is organized every three months to introduce the company and its facilities to new employees. The first introduction day included visiting the sewing factory and logistics centre. A tour was organized for us, showing every operation from receiving the fabrics and sending them to manufacturing to packing the garments. The sewing factory is in Tallinn and most of the items are sewn there. All knits are out-sourced, since the company doesn’t have the machinery needed for manufacturing knit items. I visited the factory during my bachelor’s for a similar tour, but at the time, I was studying pattern making, therefore the things I focused on at the time were different from the ones I focused on this time. It’s interesting to see, how my focus has changed so that I am more aware of the whole supply chain now than I was before, when I was mostly focused on only the manufacturing part.

Johanna

Last post

So, it’s time for my last blog post!
The report is finished and the 10 weeks of working on my individual field study are officially over! It has been a valuable experience to make a project based on a real company and I have learned a lot. The field study has provided me with more knowledge of how a fashion company could operate and how the total business model and value chain could look like. The purpose of my study was to explore opportunities for improving the current business model (to be more circular), which have given me a deeper understanding for how different factors influence business decisions. I feel like I’ve learned to see “the big picture”.

Hope you all had a good time on your internships or projects ☺ and now, have a great summer!!

Second update

Hi guys!

Long time no see!  I´ve been quite busy with work and my internship. Last (and my first) time I checked in here I had just started my internship. Since that I have contacted their suppliers to map down all first- and second-tier suppliers to get a whole picture of their supply chain. I am doing this in order to see if anything could be improved regarding time, costs and quality. I am now waiting for responses and will update you how it all went soon!

Talk to you soon!

Ann

Last note

Soooo my internship is over, I've had a great time working as a stylist assistant! I learned a lot working with stylists, models, photographers make up artists etc. And its been so much fun, I got to do a lot of the pictures that is published online and on social medias.
I've also been involved in the online store - department since that is the team I belonged to. So i learned a lot about managing an online store, and believe me it's a lot! Great people, great company and great knowledge.

And I'm happy to be spending the rest of the summer here evolving my skills!

Wishing you all a great summer and hope all of your internship have been good!

Snapchat

Last but not least I would like to talk a little bit about Snapchat. This is for many retailers new and exciting way to communicate to their customers and since the marketing department at Jollyroom wants to stay innovative and in forefront, there was no other option than to start snapping! 

So what is Snapchat really about? I guess most of you have it as a personal way of communication and the same goes for companies. It is a way to be more personal and connect like friends more than a company. Our digital world is changing and pictures give a higher scope than texts nowadays. As for Jollyroom, Snapchat is suppose to spread joy and laughs to the friends and followers.  Use a lot of emojis, colors and funny expressions so as to create a relationship. Since there is no way to calculate or analyze the number of followers or unfollowers at Snapchat the best way to measure the effect of your work is to try to engage and make the followers interact with you. For instance by screen shooting a snap and color it or to be creative and paint on it and thereafter ask them to send it back to you. Sometimes it might be difficult to engage people without giving them any increased value for the effort and therefore competitions is a good and rewarding way to connect and create relationships with the followers. 

Another way to increase value is through Snapchat takeovers, which means that the account is run by an external person that would be of high interest for the followers. That could be bloggers, an expert in some area or a certain department showing off something cool or behind the scene. People are curious and often wants to know the secrets behind your company and Snapchat is the perfect tool for that. In order to be successful it is like with everything else, you need to have a set strategy and structure for the content of the week so as to fill every snap with an increased value and maintain or increase the number of views every day. Lastly, stick to you strategy and keep track of the scope and result from different posts - in this way you will get to know and understand your customers! 

Hope you all have had a great field study! Wish you all a wonderful summer - see you in September! 

My last note

My eight weeks at North Bend ended a while ago, but I am still sitting here which makes me very happy !

During these weeks I have learned so much and seen every step, how many times a collection have been turned inside out, changed and changed again. I have seen the ideas develop to real garments and later shoot and put on the website. I have meet the store owners, designed underwear, worked in store, received samples over and over again to in the end be correct. On the same time have I seen how the brand have expanded and started working with European countries, and I am in charge of that contact when it comes to delivering samples and get it all together. I have had freedom when it comes to photoshoots and been in charge from the idea to the final put on the website.

With all the responsibilities and bigger tasks I really feel like I have become a part of this brand and I am enjoying my time so much here!

These weeks have been filled with new assignments, lots of fun and new knowledge, and I am sure the rest of the summer will continue that way.

Enjoy your holidays!

Assortment council

Last week on Thursday and Friday we had meetings with a few stores to hear their comments on the SS17 collection. We started with a review of the sales numbers of both North Bend and the external brands sold in store. The owners of the stores commented and brought up questions they had and what customers had commented in store, what they through was missing in the collections and so on. Later we moved on to looking at our own collection and the external collections. There were discussions about what colors was most wanted in store and sold best, and how well North Bend fitted together with the rest of the brands. Some products we chose to remove from the collection as it became clear that either the customers or the stores wanted the items. In other cases products were added as they had a huge demand in store. Pricing and campaigns were as well discussed and all the clothing was put in different assortments.

This was two very interesting days when the time just flew by, and on Friday I left the office with much more knowledge and understanding than before.

Some old notes from my Internship at North Bend that might be time to publish

During the last weeks a lot of things has happen and this was one of the them:

Yesterday I started with an interesting and fun assignment, I was set to design the pattern for men’s underwear Autumn/Winter 2017. Three patterns were needed and I started right away. I got to refresh my knowledge in illustrator as well. The patterns are ready by now, but I still need to work on the construction, to make it possible to do an allover print. More what happen yesterday is that we set up our clearance sale point here in the office and I went through the product descriptions I wrote for Autumn/Winter 2016, so they are ready to be sent in.

Hi everyone!

My internship at Jollyroom ended a couple of weeks ago, and now it´s time to reflect about my learnings during the 8 weeks. One of the experiences that I will take with me from Jollyroom is the insight of the structure of the company, and how the different departments and employees work with each other. It was really interesting to see all the different processes, from putting orders of products at the buying department, see the products arrive at the stock and then finally, the products end up at the web shop available for customers. Then, the marketing department make sure that the products get the right attention in social media.

My internship will definitely help me in my future career, with experience from a growing ecommerce business and working within a buying department.

I wish you all a wonderful summer!

/Ellinor

When something ends – something new begins

The past ten weeks went quickly and our field study project for Stahard is now over. This project was a very interesting combination of research and real working life. We got to known the eye tracking tool which can help online retailers to understand about the ‘why reasons’ of consumers’ behavior and areas of interest on their websites. 

In fact, that was exactly what we were up to with this project, trying to understand and investigate the ‘why’ reasons of Stayhards’ consumers’ navigation al behavior. We found some differences between different consumer groups as well as ‘common lines’ in consumers’ behavior. If you are interested of our project and report just keep your eyes on SIIR’s (Swedish Institute for Innovative Retailing) webpage – you will find the there later. 

You might wonder how our presentation for the company went yesterday. We are happy to answer – it went well :) We could give some new viewpoints of consumer behavior for Stayhard and some ideas for the future research, from which we will choose the topic for our new project during this summer. Yeah, we’ll continue our collaboration with Stayhard over the summer. So we can say that all the work paid off and we are looking forward to the next challenge.  

Have an amazing summer everyone!

-Niina & Nelli-