Internship blogpost 2/3

Hello again!

In my previous post I told you about my internship at Helsinki Fashion Week where I and another intern are conducting a research on animal leather transparency. This time I will update you a little bit about our progress with this project. One of the biggest issues that we discuss in our report is the lack of efficient traceability for leather raw material, which consequently affects negatively to the overall transparency of the entire leather supply chain.. The report is nearly finished but now we are also developing a transparency questionnaire for brands that sell animal leather products. We hope to publish them both simultaneously since they are closely connected to each other and together they will create even bigger statement for the transparency requirements within the leather industry.

-Marita

Blog 2/3

I have been a bit behind on my postings, so I will have my next 2 posts quite close in time. Since my last post not much has changed. I am still doing influencer marketing and it is quite difficult since the owner gives herself many parameters. We can basically only contact Swedish influencers and since we are in a certain age group there are only so many influencers with our parameters in Sweden. Also the age group is older women and they ask for a lot of money. I have discovered there is a whole sector of older women influencers, it's crazy! Unfortunately they are quite hard to reach and in my experience can be very rude. I honesty think we have only had a sale form an influencer but we continue doing the same anyways. Before starting this internship I was very interested in influencer marketing and I truly believed this was something I strongly wanted to work with in my carrier. I have written one of my past thesis in this topic and it always fascinated me as a marketer. This internship has allowed me to put that into practice and explore other areas and I have come to terms with myself that I do not like the practice of influencer marketing but more the science behind it.  I have also been able to talk to others whom have done influencer marketing before, for other companies, and get tricks and tips as to how to find them. It is very interesting, but I find it all very false and you have to basically be "extra nice" and fake to them offering them free things and money in the hopes they are interested in your brand. I tried different tactics because I feel our brand is very unique and not a basic ff brand.  For example I invited them to our shop and have them get free measurements and customize their own garment, but unfortunately it is very hard to get a reply. Due to this we only concentrate on the micro influencers, which honestly do not give us sales. I did though get one with many followers to be interested, around 14k followers but unfortunately my boss did not find her as interesting and we lost the contact. It is quite difficult to have a lot of freedom on a task or project, but then receive the restrictions after you do something.  Aside of this I am on my own a lot of the time, my boss went on a family trip for a week, so I was basically in charge of the whole store that week, also on weekends when I have to go in, I open and close the shop myself. It is quite a big responsibility as I am the only one there. I did sell a scarf the other day from a mother's day campaign I made, so I was happy from that. 

There is a man who comes in the shop and has meetings with us. He is a consultant and runs the web page and campaigns. His name is Zlatan and he comes in every 2 weeks or so for 2 hours and basically shows us analytics. We discuss the web page with him and any bugs or technical issues we might find within.  That is all from now, happy summer to all! 

TIMEOUT Jeans Chapter 3: end of a great experience

Hello everyone,

My last weeks at Timeout have been great, I had a lot of work to do, but everything has been super interesting and involving.

It was time for our suppliers to start sending some new ideas for the SS2020 collection. We have been buried in garments, literally! We have been receiving new deliveries everyday, which implied a lot of cataloguing work, but also a lot of fun: new colours, new designs and patterns and the best part of it was choosing what to keep and what to leave, of course. Most of our clients go for a very simple and formal style, which makes it sometimes difficult for suppliers to reinvent their propositions for the upcoming collections, particularly when it comes to spring-summer, a season that naturally brings bright colours and loose garments. Anyway, a lot of pieces means a lot of choice that enabled us to pick the right garments and put the final collection together.

The next step was organising quantities and deliveries, hoping that suppliers will keep up with the schedule. Some of the pieces we decided to introduce in the upcoming season have been ordered in lower quantities, since they represent a little test we wanted to do with our customers, and lower quantities mean less risk.

Overall, at the end of this journey, my experience has been wonderful. I have been able to deal with the reality of a buying office and managed to understand a lot of complex inner workings. Now that it is over, I am sure I will miss it! I had a great mentor that guided me with a lot of patience and gave me great knowledge throughout these months. I hope to be back very soon.

Have a nice summertime!

Cecilia

Travel @ Asket - Pt. 2

In this blog I want to talk about my experiences outside of ASKET office. I was fortunate enough to visit the Asket’s warehouse in Estonia and also one of their probable innovation partners in Gothenburg.

I went to the warehouse for a 3 day visit which mainly dealt with audits and inspection of a new product Pique polo that were to launch soon. We had seen some issues on the samples that arrived in our Stockholm office for approval and hence the product team decided to go all the way to Estonia to check the production sample.  We did a  100% quality inspection to make sure no faulty products reach to the customers and that Asket stands by its promise to provide quality clothing. It was amazing to see such decisions made by the founders and learn how important it is to defend your core values. I also got to learn a lot about warehouse operations as I had never visited one before.

The second exposure that I got was with a Gothenburg based company that helps fashion companies to transform their physical products into 3D virtual garments. The scope of 3D product development and retail experience is limitless in the future. It was great to see how Asket is investing to be a part of this transformation and how important it is to continuously include innovations in the business to keep thriving in the competition.

Both these visits were quite a learning for me and of course I also got to spend some time with my colleagues outside of work which was quite fun to understand them a little better.

Until next time,

Noopur J