Press days

It´s press days which means a lot of things to do. Do invitations, organize the showrooms and meetings in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm… Also this week, some important lend outs were made. A famous singer and an upcoming band performed at a celebration of the Danish Queens birthday, wearing Bruuns Bazaar. I got to hang out with the band for a while as they came in to the head office for a photo shoot. In short, I get to do all kinds of different things and it is super interesting to be a part of the PR department.

My first weeks at Shavel Home Products

Hello from the US, I just finished my first two weeks at a company called Shavel Home Products which is located in Princeton, NJ. SHP is a manufacturer of home textiles such as sheets, blankets, comforters, dog beds etc.. Products are sold through the company’s own website as well as through several retailers. 

There are 8 people working in the office here and I got to spend time with each of them during my first week. This was very helpful in order to find out each person’s responsibilities but it also gave me the chance to ask all kinds of questions. Moreover, I learned how to process sales orders and how to do the invoicing which is part of my every day job tasks. Furthermore, I familiarized myself with the company, its products and its customers. We are currently brainstorming about a project which I will be working on during my time here which will give me the chance to learn more about the company’s entire value chain and their procedures.

Åhléns Business Area Home

Åhléns Business Area Home

My name is Carolina and I am doing my internship at Åhléns headquarter in Stockholm. I started my internship one month earlier then the rest of the class, so I will give you a small recap.  The first week I got introduced to the staff at the Business area home department, took part of different meetings and got a basic understanding of the different computer systems. At the beginning of March I started to assist the textile buyer of Brands. We have been to a few meetings with potential and existing suppliers, which I found very interesting.

The first pictures down below shows when we were visited the Åhléns DC in Hjordbro.  It was interested to see how the process of placing an order affects the handling of the products at the DC. The next picture shows a meeting where the designers at the home departments went through upcoming trends in textiles, furniture, materials and patterns. The last picture shows yesterday activity where we visited the new floor for home products at Åhléns City in Stockholm.

  

My project at KappAhl

Hi everyone!
Now I will tell you a bit more about the main project I have at KappAhl and what I'm doing most of my days. I have got my own "office" in the laboratory department at the company. Here I have an own computer and a Martindale machine that I use for most of my testing project. With this machine I perform abrasion tests with different kind of textile materials and different kind of abradants. With this project the aim is not to test the textile materials, instead the aim is to test the abradants, and hopefully in the end of the project be able to make a conclusion of which abradant that is the most suitable one to use in the future when performing abrasion tests. I have 18 different textile materials to test, and these are going to be tested with 4 different abradants and with 2 different methods, so there is a lot of testing to be done and it will take a long time! Beside this project I also do some other testing, mainly on outerwear. and it can for example be washing tests. I also attend a lot of different kind of meetings, about 2-3 different meetings per week, which is really fun and informative :)

Our Internship at IKEA

Hej! We are Angelina and Susanna and we will be blogging about our internship at IKEA together. It’s been 2 weeks into our internship and we both work with communications under the same supervisor. Summing our experiences in two words: Exciting and Inspiring. Meeting people of different backgrounds from all over the world in this little town called Älmhult, the headquarters of IKEA, literally in the middle of nowhere, is very exciting. One day we could be meeting with the Italian designers and the next day we could be travelling to IKEA Helsingborg for meetings or having discussions over lunch with the sustainability manager.

In the first week, we attended guided tours by the managers from the different departments. Going behind the scene at IKEA communications where the iconic IKEA’s catalog was created and seeing live products photoshoot taking place with a huge range of props in many settings are beyond amazing and a real eye-opener. Creativity is overflowing. At the accredited IKEA Test Lab, it’s a whole new vibe. Minimalism precedes the usual bright colorful walls. A lot of testing goes on under the same roof, from chemistry to textile, furniture, lightings and fire. It’s nice and warm being in the climate chamber which stimulates humidity changes to reveal how the product will behave in certain conditions such as in hot and humid countries.

It’s inspiring to learn the story behind every product. It takes numerous research, testing and thousands of home visits to understand how to create better products with good design. IKEA’s democratic design brings good design through the ideal combination of form, function, quality and sustainability at an affordable price, something which we learn to keep in mind.  

In these two weeks, we learn a lot about communications and PR. Our work can range from mapping collaborations to creating content, editing and travelling for meetings. After work, we will walk over to IKEA’s Activity House to work out and also play badminton. It’s free! That also includes using of the sports hall, facilities and renting of sports equipment. Aktivitetshuset has all kinds of sports equipment, fitness classes, café, lounge, function rooms, music recording room, car maintenance facilities, steam bath and sauna, facial and massage and many more. Our internship marks the start of our work-life balance healthy lifestyle!

Internship at Velour by Nostalgi

Hi everybody!

 

I am doing my internship at a Gothenburg-based brand by the name of Velour by Nostalgi. This week was my third week here. I am assisting all functions of the company. There are six employees at the office. The first week, the office was in great need of AW15 order entries. This became my task for the entire first week. Velour by Nostalgi has recently introduced barcodes to their products as this also is a requirement of many retailers. The first full collection equipped with barcodes on hangtags will be the AW 15 collection. I worked with this during the second week. This week, I have been working with managing the warehouse for future outlets and clearances. There are clearance sales twice a year and now they will also open a permanent outlet store outside of Stockholm during the following week. I have been working with determining which products to pick and pack according to the customers’ needs. This last week, I visited the warehouse for picking and packing the chosen products.

As goes for me and is seemingly typical among smaller companies, my internship description isn’t quite clear. We will see what next week has in store! J

My first days at Bruuns Bazaar

Today was my first day at the internship and I must say that it was a great day to start at. The designer of the company was announced as one of the nominees for ELLE Style Award Designer of the Year. And of course this immediately required the marketing department, where I will be during my internship, to work. I was happy to meet the intern that I am to replace, and during the first days here she will introduce me to the different tasks that I will do. In short, the day went by super fast and I have gotten so many new impressions and information that I´m exhausted, but I´m really looking forward to what I have in front of me. I think I will have a great spring and summer here.

Hi,

Two weeks has now gone by since I started at Panos.This week I have worked a lot with pinterest and other social media platforms. The company had only created a pinterest account, but they havn’t posted anything yet. It was my job to create a good image so that Pinterest could be a part of the company’s social media platforms. Since I wasn’t very familiar with it, it took a while to learn how to navigate and create albums. I had discussed a lot with the marketing manager about how Panos wanted to communicate to their customers, and did therefor know which type of picture they wanted me to use.  I found Pinterest to be a very good platform to communicate with customers but also with other companies as well. I have to say that I think that social media are becoming more and more interesting the longer I am working with it. Hopefully I get the opportunity to work much more with it and perhaps launch the platform during next week. 

Have a nice day everyone!

/ Linnéa 

My first days at Kappahl

Hi everyone,
My name is Malin and currently I'm doing my internship at Kappahls' headquarter in Mölndal. I had my first day at Kappahl last Monday so I have been there for almost 2 weeks, and I'm so happy about it. I work at the purchasing development department together with 3 quality engineers (actually the only quality engineers working at Kappahl) and help them with different kind of projects.

Last week included a lot of meetings at the company. The week started with two meetings, one with the quality engineers (they have this kind of meeting every Monday) and one with the purchasing development department. It was really good to start the internship period with these kind of meetings because it was a good introduction for me and helped me to get a better understanding of what they are working with etc.

This week I have spend a lot of time in the testing laboratory at Kappahl. I have done tests such as washing tests and abrasion tests. The abrasion test is a very big project that will take a lot of time and probably I will spend most of the time of my internship with this project. Since they have handed over this project to me I have to take a lot of responsiblity which feels really good :)

It feels that I already have learned so much during these two weeks and I really looking forward to learn more from the upcoming weeks, I will keep you updated :)

Have a nice and sunny weekend!

First week of the internship

Hi everyone,

The first week of my internship at Panos Emporio has gone by super-fast. First of all, everyone is really friendly towards me and it was no problem to get acquainted to everyone. I am currently sitting together with the PR and marketing manager and learning how an “ordinary” day could look like. Their head quarter is in Mölndal, which basically means that my day starts at 05:20 when I wake up, and then I go by bus to the station of Borås, to Göterborg and then to Mölndal. At the end of the day I am home at 18:30, so the days are quite long comparing to school, but it’s no problem when the workday is fun and goes by really fast. At this stage everything is still quite new to me, and I can imagine that during the following weeks I will learn a lot. The first few days involved tons of information so that I could get a clearer picture of how they work. It was very impressive and I slowly starting to love this company more and more!

The marketing manager is constantly discussing with me and wants to know my point of view of things, which I really appreciate because it makes me feel valuable. To get to know their products much better I got the chance to choose some of the products that I though should be published on social media platforms. It is important to choose the right picture at the right time and with the right text.

It’s crazy how fast you get used to a new life. I have only been here for a week and I already feel like I know these people. I am so anxious to see what I will do next week.

Have a nice day and a Happy Easter!

/ Linnéa