Final internship update (post 3/3)

Hi! I Hope you all have an amazing summer holiday!

This is the third and last blog post of my internship in Georgia. I probably should have written this post a long time ago but for some reason I was procrastinating :) My last weeks of the internship weren't really busy. I still was producing content, however beside that, I was spending a lot of time analyzing what worked and what didn't work and discussed with the owner of the brand the future moves and strategies that would increase sales. 

We’ve come to the conclusion that production of consistent content is a must for the brand in order to keep the customer engaged as well as to attract new customers. This applies especially when it comes to social media, where many other brands try their best to get and maintain customers' attention. Being active and consistent is a key here, brands just have to create a relevant content and publish pictures of their products! By posting regularly, some interesting things happened right before the end of my internship. Other handbag and leather-focused Instagram accounts started to share our pictures of our products which was very nice. Also, Houpaci had another collaboration with another brand who would borrow Houpaci’s bags for the photoshoot. They would later share the pictures on their social media accounts and tag Houpaci, which of course is a positive and exciting thing, since this would increase brand awareness and potentially boost sales. There was so many other things that happened but I will keep it for my report:) Overall, I’ve had two amazing productive months and I can’t wait to see all the great things that will surely happen to the brand in the future!  

/Natela

Time to say thanks! (3/3)

Last Friday I finished my internship at the slow fashion brand I have been working at for the last 8 weeks. It has been a journey with great insights into the field of sustainable fashion on the small brand scale.

The last two of weeks of my internship showed quite acutely how even small hick-ups in the supply chain may affect so many aspects and create a real domino effect. A parcel with marketing samples from the supplier was lost by a big transportation company. The parcel was shipped to be delivered to Gothenburg on a morning express delivery to be photographed together with some other last samples of the SS22 collection on the same day. However, the parcel wasn’t delivered on the correct date, and the next day we received a parcel with cables belonging to a robotics’ company.  The same samples were also supposed to be sent to Japan the next week, but eventually the Japan parcel was sent without them as the big delivery company couldn’t locate our parcel. It is quite eye-opening how one parcel being mislabelled at the logistics’ centre can cause such losses for small companies, as the brand might now need to re-book the photographer and send the samples to Japan separately.

Also, one of the side effects was that it stole some of the time I had planned to work with the customer project. However, I gladly had a couple of days to dig into the world of Google Analytics as well as Instagram and Facebook statistics and I could start to build up a picture of how customers of the brand in different age groups behave on the web shop, where they live and what are their interests. Unfortunately, I could not quite finish my project, though I have 2 more weeks to work for the field study in the format of the research paper and I am planning to finish my slides for the company together with the paper.

However, before that I am going to enjoy some time off and the summer while it still lasts. The paper awaits to be written, but for this blog this is my last post. So, thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of the summer!

Best,
Liisi

It's almost the end of the internship whilst just the start of the project (2/3)

It is my second last week at my internship at a small, local, slow fashion brand – the time has been flying! Since the last post, my tasks have shifted a bit as the actual staff members of the company have been on holidays on a circulating basis. Whereas earlier I had only been working under the creative director and designer, for the last couple of weeks I have also been taking care of some of the tasks of the sales and marketing coordinator in forms customer communication and web shop orders that are sent from the stock of the studio store, while she has been on holidays.

As the days have been filled with primary projects and tasks of the brand, my customer segmentation project has been postponed and shrunk a bit. However, the project is under planning and will be my main task for the last week of my internship, once my tasks with SS22 collection are done.

The core of the project has shifted more from segmentation to updating the brand’s buyer persona profile, which was originally created several years ago. Since then, the company has grown its sales especially on its own web shop, whereas earlier the sales have almost solely happened through stockist retailers. 

Having straight contact with the customers through the web shop as well as social media, creates a great source of non-biased information for persona formation in forms of Google analytics as well as Instagram and Facebook statistics. These stats will be my main sources of data for the project. I have been given rather free hands with the project and I’m interested to see what I can find and see through the data, and how the processed data can help the company to improve and in which areas.

My next post should come out after a week or so, and hopefully then I’ll be able to share some insights of my buyer persona project.

// Liisi

Digital Marketing Internship

I am now many months into my internship and I am working on a wide range of projects for the second-hand apparel company. In the beginning, I was only working on graphic design and social media marketing, however now I have been allowed to take more ownership over my work. My primary work is concerned with email marketing and Google Ads along with all other aspects of digital marketing at the company. The company operates with a flat hierarchy so employees are encouraged to suggest and pursue projects they feel will benefit the company. 

My project is primarily focused on the use of social marketing as a strategy in social enterprises. That is to say, I am researching how social enterprise companies market their social values to create shared value for stakeholders with the goal of affecting positive changes in behavior on a wide scale.

The lifting of pandemic restrictions has led to a significant lull in e-commerce and online shopping so it is very interesting for my project to see how companies respond to these challenges whilst trying to remain true to their business mission and stated values. 

I hope that everyone is having a lovely Summer!

Fiona