Design & Production internship at Dedicated 2/3

 Hey guys and happy Friday!

I hope everyone is safe, healthy and enjoying their field studies. It is insane to think that I have already done four weeks of my internship - time really flies when you're having fun. I must say, I have enjoyed my internship far more than I could have ever imagined and my colleagues are the best. It feels like a small family and they have really welcomed me with open arms. 

During my four weeks at Dedicated I have learned so much. Whenever we receive samples, I measure them and give comments to our suppliers. Due to the pandemic, our suppliers in India are a bit limited to how much work they can do, which we have to take into consideration. It is challenging and fun to try to come up with solutions for these kinds of things. I have also participated in design meetings with our designers to work on upcoming seasons and campaigns, which was a lot more fun and stressful than I thought haha. On another note, May will be an exciting month for both Dedicated and me since we have many fun things coming up. Hopefully, I can share some more exciting things about this in my next blog post.

Happy weekend to everyone but most of all - GLAD VALBORG!! I hope everyone can enjoy the amazing weather!

// Linda 

Company internship - A Norwegian fashion rental company

 Blog entry 2/3

Time flies!
Soon it's already May and before we know it, it will be June!

I can see in this blog that you all have such interesting and fun internships, I am glad we can follow each other on this platform. 

For me, since my first blog post, these first weeks of the internship has been so interesting and super inspiring to be a part of! To understand how rental companies in practice actually work and enable more sustainable relation to our clothing consumption as well a prolonging life of  garments!  

So far, my focus has been to research about nordic brands and create contact with them. So if I am learning about the industry and how it works, it's funny to say that I am also learning more Norwegian as well as Danish in my everyday work! :D  I got the chance to meet a Norwegian colleague in Stockholm (where I am currently staying), and it so fun to meet the people you work with to connect and talk, to even go through questions you might have. The human interaction in reality makes it so more real and you get more energy from it. Hopefully I can travel to Norway soon and meet the rest of the team, irl! 

Going back to the actual internship - it's really interesting to be a part of the connecting process, and to be the one that search and choose brands. The most time consuming part is to find emails and phone numbers to brands, which can be tricky to find sometimes. And what I have noticed is that, since everything mostly online, for brands and other companies, the responsiveness of interested brands are fast, and my assumption is that it has something to do with companies who have more home-offices (I can't prove this scientifically, but it's just my assumption for now). 

Talking about online, In Norway right now, and probably for all norwegians all meetings are done remote, and sometimes this can be difficult since you can't feel the garments or see the proportionate colour of the garments. However, remote work also allows connecting and e-meeting with brands that are not in Norway, e.g Sweden or Denmark. 

This was all, for this time!

Stay safe and I am waiting for you guys to post!

/Amanda J

Digital marketing Intern

 (1/3) 

Wow, these first weeks just run away and I haven't had the chance to make my first post here until now. Read through all of your others posts and your projects seem to be fun! It's Sara Hjälmeby writing, I'm in the Fashion management and marketing program and I'm doing my internship at a swimwear brand as a Digital Marketing and Content Strategist. 

We are currently in the fourth week of this internship and I've learned a lot already! My focus during this internship is to work with emails and the brand's website. We are analyzing customer's patterns and trying to match our content to them. In the world of marketing customer loyalty is on everyone's lips. The questions are "How could customers be more loyal?" or "What is making them loyal and not?". Now you may wonder why this is a common topic to talk about; it's about marketing costs and efficient marketing. A returning customer is much cheaper than a new customer in terms of marketing costs, and if a customer is loyal to a brand, the more likely it is that it returns with less effort in marketing than a new customer. Well, this is harder than it sounds like and every company has its strategy how they communicate with and to their customers intending to keep them loyal. 

After these pasts weeks, in which we focused on introducing me to all programs and trying to understand the brand's strategies, we are now going to dive deeper into developing a customer loyalty program. I'm looking forward to learning more about this. Hey! The last thing I want to say is to wish everyone good luck with your projects, and I'm looking forward to more reading! 

Take care, 

S.

Internship: Sustainable Women Fashion 1/3

 

Hello everyone,

My name is Nadia, and I am fashion designer doing my Masters in Fashion marketing and management. I am doing my internship with a Swedish fashion brand. It is brand providing colorful fashion for women in a sustainable way. They are providing slow fashion  for women ,encouraging sustainable material such as organic cotton .They are located in Visby Gotland in the eastern coast of Sweden.  It is very beautiful island.

 This is Third week of my internship. My task during the internship is very interesting, being a fashion designer I am enjoying a lot with these multitask working. One of my tasks in the internship is to develop zero waste collection for summer. In this project I do research on different aspect of zero waste.

I found out how designers are working with the concept of sustainable fashion in  different ways. After doing research I found some great ideas and start working with these concepts. Then I made some research and mood boards and started developing fashion illustrations after completing my fashion developments. Then I started the pattern making for selected designs and do stitching of these garments. Beside this task, I will also learn social media marketing, which I will share in the next post.

I go to the office 3 days a week and work from home for 2 days a week. During work from home my supervisor  gives me different tasks like, new circular ways of developing the company for the future. My tasks and responsibilities also include Sourcing new sustainable materials for future collections and Designing Knitted cardigans etc.

Thank you and hope you all are enjoying your internships and new experiences. 

Stay safe and have fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research project about color and consumer behavior 

2/3

Hi everyone!

Last time I was writing here I wished I could present some interesting results for you all, but I have nothing yet, maybe next time. After searching for articles about color and consumer behavior we have concluded that there is not much research that has been done on this topic. But I believe this makes it even more interesting to investigate.  We have now  started with our interviews and have conducted a few. We decided to go for focus group interviews instead of single ones and it has been so much fun and interesting to do this. The least fun part has been to transcribe the interviews since it takes a lot of time, but a little fika, a cup of coffee and all the intersting answers makes it more fun. Also, I would like to thank all of you who have participated in the focus groups and the ones who are going to participate next week!  

As Adina also wrote in her blogpost, the most difficult part with having focus group interviews is for sure to not intervene and start discuss with the participants and tell them our thoughts. But I see this as a practise for other interviews in the future. However, the next step in our process is to start writing on our own reports but it is difficult to find the "right" research question and formulate it to be perfect. This will the project for next week, and to be finished with the interviews if we find that we have all the information we need. This is also something me and Adina have discussed, how many interviews are actually enough? Well, we will have to figure that out next week as well.

Have a good week, and don't forget to enjoy the sun! 

Caroline 

My first weeks as an intern

Hello everyone! 

My name is Natela and this blog post is all about my internship in a startup company named Houpaci, Georgian leather bags manufacturer. Currently I am in Georgia (country :)) and my internship location is all over the place. Some days I’m in a studio, some days somewhere in the city making pictures and some days I’m working from home due to the covid situation. Apparently, people in Georgia are not allowed to leave their houses due to curfew which means everyone has to stay at home after 21.00 which of course was a big surprise for me living in Sweden but I digress…

So my internship includes helping the brand to build a marketing strategy for social media, namely Facebook and Instagram. The ultimate goal is to create a relevant content for the brand targeting current and potential customers. The internship start was a bit challenging for me since the owner of the brand didn't have a clear vision on who the target group is, which means that I didn't know what content needs to be made. Therefore, during the first weeks we’ve been focused on researching and understanding the target group and also trying to find the right marketing strategy. Another challenge was the fact that I’m not a photographer and have a very (VEEEERY) limited knowledge of how to make a decent picture, but hey, I have an iphone. The thing is that the company is so small that there are no financial resources available in order to hire a photographer and a studio. So basically, we work with what we have which I can't complain about because it’s a lot of fun! 

During the upcoming week we are going to prepare for the 1 year anniversary of the brand and we are going to think about what type of campaign we can launch. I will talk more about it in my next blog post. Byeee

Miss home, my cats and Swedish godis:)

Natela

Ethical fashion, second post

 Hi everyone and happy Friday! 

This is my second blog post and since my last post some things have happened. First of all, the sun and spring have entered Borås which makes me cry of joy. Second, I have developed a purpose and more precise topic for my IFS which I feel very happy about. My subject is still ethical fashion, and hopefully I will gain insights of future challenges of ethics within the fashion industry and more specifically for workers in the upstream supply chains. 

I have started to search for articles to use in my literature review. At this moment, I have gone through 94 articles (first draft) and after I make myself a cup of coffee and place myself on my sunny balcony, I will continue to search for articles. I want to be able to have as much depth as possible and hopefully I will end up with even more suitable articles after this afternoons' search.

I wish you all an amazing weekend!

Johanna 

Internship at [a]industri, post 1/3

Hi everyone,

My name is Anna Jonsson and I am a student at the Textile Value Chain Management program. I hope you all are having a good time at your internship or with your research project/report! It is very interesting to read the posts here at the blog and get some insights into what everyone is doing and experiencing during this course.

I am doing an internship at [a]industri in Gothenburg, which is a factory and design studio that produces garments here in Sweden for different clients and also gives design and product development consultancies. It was established in 2020 and was before that the manufacturing part of the fashion brand Atacac. Since it is a factory working with production that needs to be done in place even during these covid-times, I am there every day and it has already been four weeks since my first day.

During these past weeks I have done a lot of things and I have learned so much so far. The first two weeks was most of the time filled with organising and packing down the factory as the company was about to move to a new location. So I started off my internship by going through and measuring around 80 different fabrics and a lot of other materials used in garment production. I have no practical textile background so it was super interesting for me to really see and feel the differences between different fabric textures, fibers, compositions, structures and so on. After the move to the new location I have taken part in the everyday activities of the factory and for example helped out with garment inspection before sending finished products to clients, done some fabric cutting and been in several client meetings where different aspects in the design or production processes have been discussed such as material choices, samples and adjustments, product ideas etc. Even though I am not involved in the sewing of the garments it is so fun and educative for me to be this close to the production every day and see the process from design to finished garments.

For my report I am planning on writing about different product development and/or production techniques that can be used for a more sustainable production, for example waste management and 3D techniques. Here at [a]industri I get insights into this area daily in the client meetings and the production processes going on so hopefully this will be very useful for me when I write my report. 

Sharing some pictures from a Friday afternoon at [a]industri below and wish you all a nice weekend and that you enjoy the rest of your work in this course! Gothenburg is sunny and the spring is here (no snow in sight haha) so I will enjoy the weekend outside. 

Stay safe! 

// Anna 

Third week

 Hello everyone,

I´m Hanna Tingsvik and I´m doing my field study at a menswear fashion brand here in Borås with a focus on sustainability. My main tasks during this period includes to set up a preffered fibre list and try to implement it by see what their different suppliers have to offer in terms of more sustainable fibres. I´m also developing a standard for the care instructions for their products as well as writing a product care guide that will go up on their website. 

The third week is coming to its end and I´m in contact with many of their suppliers who have surprisingly a lot to offer in terms of sustainable materials. I´m now waiting for fabric swatches from different suppliers to develop the material change further. Another part of this task is to map which certificates the different suppliers have and what certificates the brand needs in order to communicate it to their customers. It sure is a jungle of certificates out there! 

The next step for me is now to contact more suppliers but also start a project with a stock of jeans that can´t be sold unless the pocket is altered. I also need to put some time on the report as I haven´t had much time for that yet. Currently the topic of my report is about the different barriers that exists for companies to implement sustainable practices. Even though I only have been working with these questions at this company for three weeks, I can see that there is a will to work with sustainability but I have noticed a lot of barriers that is working against this will.

It´s so nice to read about everyone´s experience here. I really hope everyone is fine and can get a lot of experience out from this time.

Take care!

Hanna Tingsvik

Resarch Project color, post 2

 Dear all,

The weeks are moving so fast and soon we are in May. The spring is here and the sun is out which makes my days so much more happy:)  

The research is proceeding, we are at the moment conducting interviews in focus groups for the research project, it's going well and we only have a few ones left. The hard part in interviewing is to not intervene in the thoughts and discussion of the focus group, and also that the interviews are taking quite a lot of time, however that's how we get good answers and we are so happy and thankful for the interviewees that took their time to answer our questions. I am also trying to come up with a good research question that will provide something to the area of color and communication in the fashion industry, that's where I am at right now. 

The field that we are studying is so interesting, we are learning about color and consumer behaviour, the values and emotions that can be triggered by color. We have noticed after making a theoretical framework table that there is not a lot of research in this area. However we are getting the support we need from each other and Anita.  

Being in a research project is making me respect the researchers, the amount of time and work they have to put down to receive a result. 

Have a good week,

Best Adina 

Research Assistant Internship: Size and Fit

Blog 1/3

Hi everyone!

Here I am writing to you the first blog entry of my Field Study in Textile Management. My self Aiman Khan and I am pursuing my Master’s in Fashion Marketing and Management at the University of Borås. As I thoroughly tried to find some internship in the companies, but unfortunately I was not able to make it through. My dream to enter into the Swedish market remain stranded that has equipped me with stress, then later, I profoundly realized that everything happens for some good reason.

Right now I am doing my Research Assistant Internship: The topic of my project is “Size and Fit”. In the past three weeks of the Field Study in Textile Management, I found this topic very interesting (clothing size and fit that how people choose their sizes). I am conducting a “Literature review regarding the state-of-art of literature on size and fit” within the supervision of Jenny Balkow. In the first two weeks of this Field Study, I learned how to conduct the Systematic Literature Review (SLR). I am reading the book “Doing a literature review” by Chris Hart, and developing a framework for my project. I am searching for a database and then explore those databases. I am also working on the keyword and search string according to the database. I found many good journal articles with high impact factors which have led me in depth knowledge about my topic of interest and how to conduct the literature review.

Your comments are appreciated and enjoy the sunny days !

Thank You and Good Luck to all

Second week working with circular textile - blog post 1/3

Hello everyone,

Sunny greetings from Stockholm! I hope you all are well and having a good time at your internships and/or field studies!

My name is Ly Pham and I am in the Fashion marketing and management master program. My internship is at a Swedish company focusing on sustainable and circular textile for hotel industry, locating on an island of Stockholm. This is my second week.

One of my tasks in the internship is to carry out a survey to gain insight about customers demand for hotel industry to take more sustainable actions towards greener textile since they play one of the major roles in energy and material consumption when it comes to textile. I find this topic very interesting, and would be more than happy to share the survey with you once it is ready to hear what you think about this errand. Beside this task, I will also learn about social media marketing for them, which I'd be glad to share in the next post. 

I go to the office 2 days and work from home for the rest of the week. I spend one day of the week to work on the field study report and think about the topic I want to write about. I try to write a diary every week but still struggle to think that I have a good method of ethnography - so if someone has a good source to learn about it or tips, please share with me and I'd be so thankful :) 

Thank you for reading this blog and see you in the next one. 

The Buzz of the First Week! (1/3)

Hi Everyone, 

It's Nathana here, I'm on the Fashion Marketing and Management course, doing a Digital Marketing internship at a Swedish underwear brand.
The first week was a blur, entering the office I was greeted with two posters of women in lace underwear and the buzz of new interns. It was an unusual experience working in an all female corporate setting, something that I was not familiar with. I'm currently delegated the task of content and campaign planning on social media channels. The roles will shift during the internship which was exciting to hear and I'll get to try other sides of marketing.

For the project, I will look at ways in which brands communicate on social media, using a discourse analysis. This is a new method for me to explore and was good that I finally settled on one, previously I was looking at doing a content analysis, discourse analysis along side interviews... I'm no super woman! I'm looking forward to getting aquatinted in the digital marketing role, observing how theory and practice align and fail in real life. 

Enjoying the steep learning curve ride! 

Sending greetings from Sunny Stockholm, such an oxymoron! 

Nathana :) 

21st Century Tailoring

 Hello everyone,

My name is Edith and I’m attending the Textile Value Chain Management program. I’m at the beginning of the third week of my internship at the Borås-founded company Blugiallo. The Blugiallo team consists of four young gentlemen, two located at the office/showroom in Borås and two at the office/showroom in Stockholm. I’m spending my time at the Borås location and since I’m a Borås native, but haven’t lived here for many years, it’s a dear welcoming back. Additionally, after a year of home studies, it feels amazing to finally wash my hair again and change out of the sweatpants. No further explanation is needed here, as I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.  

Blugiallo’s business model can be described as an integration of traditional craftsmanship and digital platforms. They offer high-quality, tailor-made menswear with products such as suits, shirts, coats, and dressed trousers. The customer can either come into one of the showrooms and get their measurements taken by one of the Blugiallo experts or they can scan their bodies through their smartphones and the measurements are transferred into their online Blugiallo account and profile. Once the measurements are done, the customer can place an order online on whatever type of product they want to purchase. The customers can further make design choices for each piece according to personal preferences. The products are made on-demand and the delivery time is 5-6 weeks. Blugiallo’s products are priced similarly to mass-produced, ready-to-wear products. They call their business model 21st century tailoring, which is both fitting (did you see what I did there?) and summarizing. 

“We are driven by the belief that the future of clothing is individualized, digital, and uncompromising in terms of fit and quality” — Blugiallo. 

My role at Blugiallo is business strategy-oriented, as I’m doing a customer survey that will be distributed to a large amount of both existing and potential customers. The purpose of the questionnaire is to gain insights into the consumers' willingness to purchase Blugiallo’s products and services entirely online, i.e how the online tailoring process would be received. So far, I have mainly focused on wrapping my head around the business model, the daily operations and processes, and getting acquainted with the fine products. This has been enabled by joining customer appointments and measurement takings, close collaboration and discussions with the entire team, and internal education. The survey questions have been developed simultaneously and the questionnaire will be distributed this week. This questionnaire will be the topic of my report and the findings will be the basis of my insights and contributions to Blugiallo, in order for the team to develop Blugiallo in the right direction within this area. 

I’m very thankful for my internship and the opportunities Blugiallo provides and considering my background within and love for menswear, I’m thrilled to spend my days at the Rolls Royce of Swedish menswear brands. 

I hope everyone is having a great spring so far and that the sun is here to stay! 

Internship: Secondhand Apparel Social Enterprise

Hello readers, fellow classmates.

My name is Fiona Byrne and I am a student of the Fashion Management and Marketing course. I am now three weeks into my internship at a secondhand apparel company that provides an e-commerce platform for charity shops. My internship is in digital marketing and so far I have been involved primarily in social media marketing and content marketing. The company is still considered a 'start-up' and is still developing its marketing practices and team. 

Day to day I am assisting with social media coordination and content marketing generation. The company is very open to me working on projects I find interesting and allowing me the freedom to identify opportunities for growth. The first weeks were spent understanding the dynamics of the company, the team I will be working with, and the marketing strategy of the company. 

At the end of last week, I was able to sit with my manager and outline some of the ongoing projects I will be working on during my time there. These include:

Email Marketing - research and action in increasing email database and increasing ROI through improving click-rate and conversion.

Content Marketing - Developing content on LinkedIn targeted at charity partners.

SEO and Domain Authority -  Building domain authority and expanding and improving SEO.

I am very interested in all of these areas and think they will benefit me greatly to gain experience in. However, I am a little concerned that the broad range of topics they want me to work on may make researching and implementing my field study report difficult. My report will be based on the topic of 'Social value-driven content marketing'. To try and keep focused I am recording my observations and ideas in a daily journal, I am also recording the minutes of meetings for reference. 

For the purposes of content marketing, I have observed so far that the company is strong in its values of sustainability, social enterprise, and community and I hope to gain more insight over time through interviews, observations and research into how these values inform the company's marketing strategy.

I am hopeful when I write my next blog post I will be quite far along in my report. The best of luck to everyone!

Research group: Size and Fit

First Entry 

 Hello everyone,

My name is Abang Vilary in the department of fashion marketing and management, currently in Borås and for this field study , am a  Research Assistant Intern on the Project of Size and Fit. The topic I chose for the study was; Netnographic study of consumer reactions to the use of size technology.

For the first two weeks of research into this topic, it was quite fun and interesting because I had never done nor heard of Netnography as a method of data collection. Netnography can be understood as a branch of ethnography in which the participants to be observed are participants engaged in online communities ranging from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube it is more like a digital ethnography. Another interesting thing about this method is the ability to get consumers insight from their traces(comments) left behind in these communities, also it’s an inexpensive method of data collection and also it is good for someone who is shy like me 😊since you must not contact the participants for interview except if you find some comments unclear and want to get clarification from the commenter you can seek for an interview.

Although this method seemed  interesting, I faced a challenge in getting online communities that focus discussions on sizing technologies, but found one which was the Zozo suit for body measurement with an online community in Reddit but this community was not active any longer and the previous discussions there was very limited due to the fact that the company involve with this technology had gone out of business. So at this point i can not proceed with this netnography study because of a lack of established communities for sizing technology discussions. But hopefully in the future such communities will exist because the Zozo Suit is coming back into business as Zozo Suit 2 and ZozoMat though i do not know when exactly😕.

The new topic am about starting is ‘‘Literature review regarding the state-of-art of literature on size and fit’’ . I will be giving feedback on how this new topic is turning out.

Thanks and hope you all are enjoying the sunny days lately especially those in Borås!!!!

Bye for now and stay safe

First 3 weeks of my internship

 Hello and good afternoon! 

My name is Michelle Dam and I am studying the Fashion Management master program. Last year I graduated from my bachelor degree in the same school, I studied Textile Management. As everyone else in my class,  I am also doing my field study this semester and I chose to do a company internship at an outdoor company as an Influencer marketing. 

Due to the current situation in the world with en COVID-19 pandemic, I partly do my internship at home to follow the restrictions at my internship. But I also had and will have more chances to be at the office to work with my teammates. Personally, I prefer to be at the office due to the environment and to get to know everyone at the company. But I think working remotely has not been as bad as I thought. I still have my ordinary working hours from 9-17 and I have daily contact with my supervisors that have been super helpful and kind. I have now been here for about 3 weeks and I already feel like I am one in the team. I have learnt so much. 

My first days at the outdoor company, I already got two markets, Norway and Netherlands that I will specialise in. The both markets are two very different markets, for example in Norway outdoor activities are very common and the Netherlands is a very flat country and does not have that many mountains and forests. My first task is to source as many influencers as possible that match the outdoor company’s brand identity. Later they will guide me on how I should contact them and I was told I was ready next week. 

This company sources profiles primarily from Instagram, but also Youtube and other social media platforms. My profiles are mostly from Instagram. To find good profiles this company has three important rules. First is high engagement, second is many followers and lastly matches the company’s value words. My task is to find profiles that have followers between 2000-20 000 and the engagement has a great value in this. The engagement concerns the profiles likes and comments to find out if there is a community within the profiles followers.

That was my first 3 weeks of my internship and I will update my second post soon again.

See you soon!

// Michelle

Week 2 of my Design & Production internship at Dedicated

 I hope everyone is safe, healthy and enjoying their field studies!

My name is Linda Finell and I study the Fashion Management & Marketing program. I am currently in Stockholm for my internship at a brand called Dedicated, which has a strong focus on sustainability in terms of using sustainable fibers and promoting ethical working conditions throughout the its supply chain. The brand started as a unisex T-shirt company but has now expanded its assortment to pants, sweatshirts, knitwear, hoodies, dresses, hats, swimwear, underwear etc, and thereby targeting women, men and kids nowadays. What makes Dedicated quite unique is that the brand has used organic cotton ever since its start, which was about 15 years ago and at that time it was not that common.

Dedicated is a pretty small company with only 14 employed at the head office. This makes the atmosphere very relaxed and cozy. Because of covid, we try to limit us to being maximum 5-6 at the office at the same time. Everyday, we start with a morning meeting at 9:15 to say good morning and catch up, but also go through more important work related things. During my short time at Dedicated, I have worked a lot in the brand's systems creating new styles for upcoming seasons and updated existing styles. I have also reviewed different samples, measured size sets, and even tried on some of the samples to see and feel the fit properly. It is very interesting and fun to actually use the knowledge I have gained from the courses we had during the first semester. Since I work with design and production I get to be at the office 3-4 times a week, which is great. During home office, I mainly work with excel and another system, where all styles are and the communication with the suppliers occur. 

For my report, I plan to write about how fashion brands communicate sustainability and the many interpretations of the term sustainability. I take notes and keep diary of everything I do and learn during my work, which will be a part of my data for this report.

I hope everyone enjoys their internships and field studies! I must say, it is very interesting to read about everyone's different experiences. Stay safe everyone.

// Linda

Buying and Sustainability Internship at a Denim Brand Part 1

 

Hej, last week I started my internship at a small Stockholm based fashion brand. The brand focuses on premium denim commodities in mens- and womenswear. The collection is completed with t-shirts, sweatshirts, shirts and jackets. During my internship, my tasks can be divided into two main areas, product development and procurement, and corporate sustainability. Primarily, I will be supporting my colleagues in the daily business regarding the product development, buying and sourcing. Additionally, I will be working on two projects. One project comprises the systemization of the processes involved in the development and procurement of products. Within the second project I will be assessing the status quo of the brand in the sustainability realm. The latter includes the advancement of the communication of the current endeavors as well as the identification of areas for improvement. Within the first week of my internship, I focused on getting to know the brand, paying special attention to the products and collection as well as the processes involved in the development and procurement of the former.

First insights resulted in the understanding that in the development of the products a great emphasis is put on the selection, and in the case of the denim products the development, of sustainable premium fabrics. Especially the development of the denim fabric is considered vital for the development of the collection and I would even say is the core of the brand, which is perceptible in the look but particularly in the haptic of the products.  This requires a strong partnership with the respective suppliers.

Based on this observation I plan to write my report on how the established partnerships can be exploited for the enhancement of sustainability, meaning the further reduction of the social and environmental impacts of the products. To do so, I will take notes throughout the internship which will help me to get a better understanding of the partnership. These notes as well as a literature review in the field of supply chain collaboration for sustainability will form the basis for the report.

In the next blog posts, you will get insights on the proceedings of my projects at work as well as how the report is progressing.

Until then enjoy the starting spring.

BR, J.W.

First week of internship - Norwegian fashion rental company

Blog entry 1/3

Hi everyone,

I hope you all are well and had a good start of your internships or / and field studies!

My name is Amanda J and I study the Textile value chain management program. I have currently been at my internship for one week now and it's with a Norwegian fashion rental company.

My internship is at the department of partnership and outfit supply relations within the nordic region and I hope to gain more knowledge and insight in this industry combined with what we have learnt from the program and the courses in sustainable business models and supply chain management. The internship is completely remote, which means that I am have online resources and I have daily contact with the department and with the rest of the company. 

I write in a diary every day after work of what I have been doing during the days and how I notice and observe how the company work and proceed with the supply and relationship management with future Swedish brands. This will hopefully give me necessary data for the final report.

Hope you are staying healthy and good luck!

// Amanda J

First week of internship

 Hello everybody! I hope you are doing well!

My name is Amanda Rognsvåg and I am studying the Fashion marketing and management program. I started my internship at Tretorn last tuesday april 6th, so have now been there for a week now. My internship is at the product developement department where I hope I can learn a lot and also use what we have learned so far on the program. THe intenship is partly at the office and partly at home. When I am at the office I have participated in several meetings and their daily activities, and during home office I have my own project to focus on. In the focus procect I will look at sulutions to how the company can make its packaging more sustainable, but at the same time cost efficient.

After every work day, I write in my diary to sum up what I have done during the day, what I have noticed and ways I see Tretorn work with sustainability. This will hopefully give me data and backround for my final repport.

I wish you all good luck and stay safe!

//Amanda

Research project, Color.

 Hi everyone, 

My name is Adina, and I am a student at the program Supply chain management. Before I started this program I did my bachelor's degree as a Textile product developer at the University of Borås. It feels weird that we have not met each other in real life, but hopefully this blog will let us have some interaction, and soon we will hopefully meet :)

To start this post I am going to share what I am doing in this course, me and Caroline Jonsson are working with a researcher in the area of visual communication and color. We have started to gather information and articles that we find interesting and relevant for the topic. This week we are going to start with the interviews, so i think we are on track. I am so happy that I am doing this research with Caroline, especially in these times. We support and cheer on each other, and I am so grateful for that. 

I think it is good that we are so free within this course, that we have to plan our time to provide the best report by ourselves, and find the appropriate methods and so on. I think we will learn a lot!

Hope you all are staying safe!

Best,

Adina

First weeks of internship with focus on circularity

 Good morning everybody, hope you all are doing well!

My name is Hanna Skoglund and I am studying the field of Fashion Management & Marketing. I started my internship a week ago at a company called Boob Design where I will work with circularity and investigate the possibilities for implementing secondhand sales within the company, which will also be the subject of my report. The first week consisted mostly of start-up meetings and research on my own. The internship will be remote but next week I will be in Stockholm to get an insight into the company and get to know my colleagues. I am really excited to get started and learn new things and hope that the company will also be happy with my efforts.

The idea is that I will start writing the report pretty soon and do it in parallel with the internship so I can correlate the tasks a little. During the period of the internship, I will keep diary entries that will form the basis for my method part in the report.

Wish everyone the best of luck with reports and internships and look forward to reading your blog posts!

Take care,

Hanna

Research in Impulse Buying 1/3

 Hello everyone,

 

I am Aadit and I am studying the Textile value chain management program. As a part of the field study, I decided to carry out a research, under the research group, ‘Impulse buying in fashion’, mentored by Jenny Balkow. The current pandemic also played a catalyst in my decision to embark on a research project. 

So, for the project, I am going to specifically study Indian consumers and their idea of impulsive purchase. This research also aims to understand at what level are the consumers aware of their own impulse and if aware, is there any resistance from their side. During the first week of the research, I read some previous literature in the field of impulse buying, to gather some understanding and getting a sense of direction for the task. As this is the second week of the project, I decided to keep the research question open, until I conduct more interviews. As this research aims to study the phenomenon of ‘impulse buying’, phenomenological interviews are going to be conducted. I have already conduced five interviews and I am in the process of transcribing them. One of the major hurdles while conducting the interview, was the digital medium, as it was difficult to immerse in the topic due to technical disturbances, though it was an interesting experience as several of our communication mediums are going to change in coming years. I can safely say at this moment that the interviews which I have conducted are aligned with the research question and I may not have to change it. I don’t wish to freeze it right now, but I will do so in coming two weeks after having talked to more people. 

The most difficult part about the interviews was to talk about emotions revolving around the activity of impulsive purchase and how they make one feel. We all might have experienced an impulse while purchasing at different stages of our lives, but consciously thinking about it, will open up several layers of our own understanding. This was one of the observations by few respondents, that it made them realise how often they buy impulsively which is essentially operated without our conscious thought process. I felt like sharing this observation, but will keep the rest for future entries, where I will explain in a concrete manner. 

I hope that you all are doing well and keeping yourselves safe wherever you are.

 

Warm regards.

Second week of internship in Neritude

Hej everyone! 

I hope everyone enjoyed their easter and the sunny weather 🌞

My name is Irina and I´m studying Textile Value Chain Management. I´m already in second week of my internship but it feels like I haven´t barely started yet because of the easter holiday. My internship is with a Finnish plus-size fashion retail online store, Neritude, that I´m helping to launch end of May 2021. We are all together three people including me so the company is very small and just opened their office in Helsinki the same week I started my internship. However, I´m working from distance here in Borås in my new little apartment but I hope to go and help the company on site if the situation allows me to. 

My position in Neritude is assistant buyer intern but as the company is small, I get to do little bit of everything. My objectives for this internship is to learn about all of the aspects of online retailing as well as gain working experience. I hope as well that I could give a lot to the company, not just take.

The first week I got introduced to the business idea of Neritude as well as the schedule for purchasing and launching the company. It´s a tight schedule but we are determined to make it happen. On the second week I started to research upcoming trends and colours and based on those I made moodboards that will be used as a reference when purchasing clothes for the webshop. That was so much fun to do! 

Next challenge is to find suppliers that will offer fashionable clothes to our target customer and oh boy its a challenge indeed as the market is niche. My tasks will have a bit of marketing once the purchasing is done which I´m also excited to learn more about.

I can´t wait for the upcoming weeks and I´m thrilled to hear how is everyone else doing with their research/internship. I´m thinking to book a room from the university and work there couple of days of the week. Contact me if you would be interested to join!

We are so close to summer, hang in there!

-Irina

Individual field study: Ethical fashion

Blog 1/3 

Hej! 

My name is Johanna and I am a textile management and marketing student and I started of this course a bit chaotic. I decided to change from a company internship to an individual field study and the first week of the course was spent on coming to terms with my decision. Now, when a flood of emotions are washed away, I feel more than happy with my decision and will spend this course and spring with my dear IFS. 

My topic is “ethical fashion”. This is a topic close to my heart and social concerns within the textile industry will in some form be the topic of my thesis and I believe that this IFS will lay a good foundation for that. At this stage I have decided the format and method of my paper and started to set a structure for it. I have decided to divide my work in different stages in order to have a goal to reach for and in these first weeks of the course my aim is to set a clear purpose and to start with the literature review. 

Hopefully I can share some findings with you when I write my next post. 

Take care!

Research project about color and consumer behavior 

Blog 1/3

Hi everyone! 

I am Caroline and I am studying the textile value chain program. This final semester I am doing a research project about color and consumer behavior together with Adina but we are writing two separate reports. Since it is the second week of the course we have started with the literature review to gather some information and get better knowledge about the topic in order to formulate interview questions. We found some really good articles and there are many about colors, I just need to select the most convenient ones for my report.  Hopefully, we will start interviewing people this week and that feels good. We have had a great start and it feels like we are in line with the schedule and that we will make it until the deadline. 

I really think this is an interesting topic and I am so grateful me and Adina are doing this together,  have daily meetings, discuss and help each other over zoom when questions and other things pop up, especially during these times when Covid-19 is present and it is difficult to meet in person. Until next time I write here, I may have some interesting results I can share with you. 

Stay safe and good luck with your reports!

/Caroline