Self assessment

While working on my project of calculating the Higg index I have, more than once, found myself wondering about the self assessment aspect of the index. The Higg index has been developed as an universal tool for all industry to use. It includes organizations in all continents and a variety of cultures - that is hundreds, if not thousands of different views on how things should be done.

The RDM (Rapid Design Module) tool is made simple to use and at the moment it mainly serves as a support tool for the designers and other decision-makers within the organization. It helps to see the results of different decisions on e.g. material choices and production. The Higg index serves as an internal tool and currently it is rarely communicated outside the organization.

The purpose of the Higg index is to promote transparency in the industry. Honesty and integrity have also been sought-after. The fact that the index itself is calculated based on self assessment somehow makes me suspicious. It is not that people would distort the results on purpose but just the different view on - say - how precise you need to be. This is particularly difficult in the first section (Materials).

Luckily the tool is quite specific in the definitions. E.g. in the Product use section you need to select if the garment has a low impact care label. There is no space for interpretation, the garment either has it or not. I guess that you can never create a tool that would be 100% precise if there is space for interpretation and thus, human error. All in all, I guess that at this stage organizations are using the tool out of interest and with good intentions.

So these are my thoughts this Monday morning. Hope you guys have a great week!

Cheers,
Noora

Maybe not that boring after all?

Greetings from Oslo! 

For a week now I have been helping out with product texts that will be used on the company’s web shop (the international market). When I got introduced to this task I got warned that it wasn’t the most fun task, but it was one of the most important tasks that needs to be done in order for them to sell their products online.

Yes it was so true, this task is time consuming and a bit boring. But from a positive side I got to see every garment in the SS15 collection before they will enter the stores. Besides I got new insight into what materials, quality, fit and special features that the designers had put into each product. From a marketing perspective I learned how to write interesting and informative texts that will help the customers in their decision-making when shopping online.

In the process I learned how they work with this task, what types of programs they use and how to use them. It was also interesting to see that communication is a key factor, where the designers, the web administrators, the photographer and the marketing department needs to communicate well with each other, in order to provide me with information that I needed - to be able to write good texts.  

From this experience I will take with me that boring tasks is maybe not that boring after all, if you just give them a chance!

//Marthe 

Emergency!

There is no way you can predict everything in fashion. And I don't mean trends here.

Being responsible for production does mean work full of surprises and possibility to check yourself in crisis situations. OK, I expected that some things may go wrong, like wrong button placement etc. Fine, we are kind of prepared for that. That's why you make samples. 

But hearing 'No, we're too busy now to embroider your stuff, we're not interested anymore' at the very wrong last moment?! Messing the whole schedule just like this? You can't trust your suppliers, even if they seem to be super nice and reliable.

So what's happening now? Finding another supplier at the very last (I mean it) moment. Lots of research, emails, phone calls, price and delivery time negotiation again... I should probably be doing it right now.

What I've learned today is that you shall:

• always be prepared for emergency situation (even if you don't expect any to happen),
• check on your suppliers (no emails back from them is already a wrong signal, call them asap!), 
• never give up! My whole planning and schedule just got messed, I have no idea what to do, but the collection has to be done on time! There's no time for blaming anyone, you just need to find a solution!

Wish me luck.

Auf Wiedersehen!

//Beata

It's Sale Season

Hello,

I am back from my Christmas break and started working again this week. I am working from home now, because our pop-up shop closed on 22 Dec after 4 weeks of ups and downs with customers, the brands we are working with and within the team. Luckily there were more ups! We have all gained so much knowledge from this pop-up and it was a great way of introducing a new business concept to Gothenburg. I was surprised how cool and stylish some of our clients were, I rarely see people like that on the streets ;) 

Anyway, this week we are having a sample sale in the shop to sell some of the pieces, that the brands sent as try-on samples, for reduced prices. The sale is only on until Saturday and I can work from home now as I am responsible for online marketing activities and I have all my work utensils here (good wifi connection and a laptop ;) ). We have produced style pictures for our social media in advance before the break, so there is less stress now. Next week we will have a meeting to evaluate this experience once more and also send a feedback to our brands, which is very valuable for them, too. 

End of January we will go to source some new brands at Copenhagen Fashion Week - which will certainly be a great experience for me! 

xoxo

Analysing the data

And suddenly, after looking through my notes and reading the articles it’s time to analyse the data. O my, so much data and so little time!

Even though we like to say to ourselves that we are good, almost perfect, there is always something that we can improve. In this case is the company really good at what they do so it has been hard to find things to improve. Well, it might also have something to do with the fact that the company is working within an industry that I have not been looking closer on before. This field study has been interesting and fun, and I must say that I have learned a lot during this time. Think that there are so many things that can affect a company, so many things that you usually do not think about… 

Now I must return to my paper, so little time and so much to write! Even though this will be my last post, there is still much to learn before presenting and I do not doubt that I will continue to learn about this subject for many years to come.

A bump on the road to sustainability

As we mentioned in our previous blogpost we came to the point where we found recycled fabrics for swimwear that in theory can be re-recycled into new materials therefore enabling us to create a closed-loop production within our company. To explore this possibility we set up a meeting with a representative of a company that produces fabrics from the recycled yarn. During the meeting we got an opportunity to see the samples of the fabric and reassure that there is no compromise in quality of the recycled fabric. We also got a chance to receive fabric in order to produce samples of our swimsuit out of the recycled fabric. 

However, when we asked if we can send the swimsuits back to the recycling after the user phase we got a negative answer. The reason for it is that the recycled yarn is mixed with lycra in order to give the fabric stretching properties. As an outcome, the separation process of these two materials is rather energy consuming at the moment and therefore it is less efficient than production of nylon from other sources.  

So that’s how we got our bump on the road to sustainable production in our company. As we have heard many times, the textile industry undoubtedly going into new direction of sustainable development, but not all the process and technologies for its implementation is yet into place. The same kind of answer we got from the company: they are aiming to recycle all products made out of their yarn, but when it comes to the complexity of clothing garments they don’t have a process developed and hopefully it will be available soon. 

Late Merry Christmas and Happy New Years greetings to everyone! ;) 

//Iuliia and Alicia

An eventful time

My time here at my internship in the Eco-friendly clothing store begins to lead to an end. During my time here I have seen a lot, met many new entrepreneurs and learned a lot of new things about the fashion industry and the development of eco- friendly clothing. I think it is a very interesting topic and it is interesting  that the story about the eco-friendly clothing development have been going on for a very long time, but the eco-friendly consumer still find it difficult to know where to search for the eco-friendly clothes and still don´t know which store to visit or which labelling to trust. There are a lot of labelling that expresses their eco-friendly image, but no one of them is similar to another.

Some of the companies’ don´t think it is important to express the eco-friendly information to the consumer because it have no connection to the design of the clothes. But when I´ve talked to the customers the really want to know all about the producing process. Maybe there are different consumer segments that the companies are focusing on, that asks for different information or have different ideas about clothing, fashion and shopping. Or maybe a new kind of consumer segment are growing, that actually care more about the production process than the design of the clothes.

The time at my internship have given me much to think about and I still think the topic about eco-friendly clothing is very interesting.

 But there have been more things that I have learned about. For example, how to think when starting a company or a store, how to have a good communication that can reach out to all involved and how to reach the same goal despite different wills. Because there are challenge to have 20 different companies with different images in an 80 square meters area. But with the right will it can be succeeded. 

BR

Annika K

Greetings from China II

It is this very special time of the year where you come together with your family, meet old friends that you have not seen for a very long time, and play in the snow as if you were a child again…it is Christmas….and I am in China….not only am I in China I also have to work…this is what I was worried about the most the whole time I thought about these 3 months ahead of me and now it happened, my first Christmas away from home, and I don’t have to tell you how much I love Christmas.

My mom tried to prepare me as good as possible J We went to the very first Christmas market within 50 km on the first November weekend to get at least one cup of Glühwein and some Christmas jingles. We baked Christmas cookies 7 weeks before Christmas which had never happened before and my mum mastered her skill in packing the cookies in a way that they don’t get squashed but stay light for my luggage. I did not get only one advent calendar but three and next to my Christmas present was a smaller wrapped up box that said “vomNikolausfür Hannah” (on 6^th of December we celebrate the Saint Nikolaus, a german bishop who looks very much like the English Santa Clause). I was ready to go.

Well when me and with one day delay also my suitcase finally arrived in China I excitedly told my also German roommate about aaaaall the Christmassy things I brought for us while opening my suitcase. When I unzipped the zipper a little paper note slid out of the suitcase saying: “detection of a prohibited object: sparkles” and there it was, my nice present, which was beautifully wrapped in read wrapping paper with white snowflakes and reindeers and complemented with a big green ribbon ripped open and all the little presents inside just spread over my suitcase….if I get them those border control, customs , what every people who did this to my Christmas surprise!!!!!

But well…I landed on the 29^th of November so from the next day on my roommate and I would alternate in opening the Lindt chocolate advent calendar and the one with little pictures and I would bring the tea out of my tea advent calendar every day to work in my new early Christmas present bottle that I got in advance from my sister, who did not want to wait until I got back with the Christmas gift giving ;) My Christmas mood was on. As it should be during December the first week was also surprisingly cold, but unfortunately I did not bring my proper winter jacket since my dad convinced me that I am flying to a subtropical part of China, which can be freeeezing cold as everybody who ever went to Shanghai can prove me right I guess, but then the sun came.

And with every day of sun the hard built up Christmas mood melted away. Christmas in China is very commercial and there are trees and lights and glitter and more colorful blinking lights and more glitter everywhere!!! But that is just not how it is at home…. From day one on me and my roommate looked for a nice thing to do on Christmas Eve but with a salary of 2000 Yuan we just simply could not afford one of the fancy Christmas dinners for 700- 1500 yuan offered by the western 3-5 stars hotels and since our service apartment was only equipped with one knife, one pot, a plastic bowl and a porcelain plate and one hotplate and no oven a self-made Christmas dinner was also impossible.

My first weeks here at the office were quite tough and with a bad feeling every day after work and no motivation whatsoever to go to the office in the morning the first indications of homesickness and counting the days that I already had managed and that were still ahead of me did not really cheer me up and I promised myself never to be away from home over Christmas ever again.

Three days before Christmas we heard about this newly opened German restaurant that offered a fairly cheap Christmas dinner with self-brewed beer and I decided to get my shit together and make the best out of it and convince everybody in the office to join me. Sure we had no oven but my mum sent me plenty of Christmas pralines that you can make without one so I wrote a big shopping list, packed my big backpack and went full of motivation to spend the whole night in the kitchen making cookies for everybody to the next Carrefour that, as I heard, has a fairly big section of imported foods. The disappointment was big when I realized that the imported food section is still only a section of 4 shelves,which of course does not have such exotic things as nougat, marzipan or coconut flakes. But well let’s be creative. I ended up buying the ingredients for the most expensive chocolate crossies, that I always thought were so boring when I was little because they were so easily made (chocolate covered cornflake drops) , that you could dream of, as well as a package of pasta, pesto and a bottle of red wine for Christmas day, our special western Christmas dinner.

I spent the whole evening in the kitchen, making my cookies and listening, at least most of the time when the internet did not break down to Christmas music. Luckily China has not discovered and censured spotify yet ;). When I woke up the next day I was actually very excited, it was Christmas!!! We packed our cookies and went to the office with a big smile on our faces and you should have seen the smiles on the faces of our Chinese co-workers when we gave them our cookies!!! They loved them and everybody tried to find some small thing they could give us in reward!!! I have not yet figured out why but in China people give their beloved apples for Christmas so we ended up with at least 10 apples each, a nut, some soda, a small glass of honey, a sweater from the 2002 collection of a customer and even a big Christmas sock of the company, filled with sweets, nuts…well and Chinese meat things that I still have to dare to try. I was very satisfied and happy. We left work early, went home to change into our nice Christmas dresses and went to the Christmas dinner.

Well of course the reservation somehow got lost and our friends were 1 hour to late due to the ridiculous traffic but in the end we all made it and even got a table. Since we were all so excited to have a fancy Christmas dinner none of us had had lunch and we were starving to death. By the time the first beer was finished the first small plate of salad finally made it two our table. Well we knew that Chinese people are not very good in serving the food all at the same time but when the second course, one bowl of soup joined the one small plate of salad on the table we realized that this would not actually be a 9 course meal for everyone of us but a Chinese styled dinner  where everything just gets put on the table to share. The good thing about this “German” restaurant was the beer though and by the time the dessert came, before the steak and fries and 3 hours after we arrived our stomachs were filled with beer perfectly fitting to the German saying “seven beers are also a Schnitzel” and the English term ”eating is cheating”.  The 5 hours 9 courses meal for 7 people was accompanied by 27 small glasses of beer, three cold glasses of glögg, a Chinese wedding proposal, a life band and a belly dance show.  We were surprised, that besides us there were only  6 other western people in the restaurant, the Spanish manager of the restaurant, one German couple that left the restaurant after one our because the girlbroke out in tears and the band, which explains why the whole night was very Chinese with a lot of filming and posting and taking pictures and selfie sticks and being busy not talking to the people on your table…I really had to think of my mum when the wedding proposal presenter started talking and the volume was sooo high that I, a big fan of loud electronic music, for the first time stuffed tissue balls in my ears just like her when we were listening to a jazz concert. 

Since our little Christmas party crew did not know each other very well but it is still nice to unpack something on Christmas we decided to do trash gift giving. A game where everybody just gets some cheesy, cheap crap or wraps something they find under their bed in newspaper and bring it as a gift. To make it a bit more fun you don’t just give the present to anyone but make a little dice game out of it. Unfortunately our Chinese guests did not really get the whole trash thing too well and ended up buying nice Starbucks mugs (Starbucks is the shit here) and imported body lotions (they don’t trust the Chinese stuff) so we ended up randomly changing the rules to make sure they would not get one of your crappy things and prevent them from reminding Christmas gift giving as a horrible disaster.

After the dinner our Chinese friends left us and the German crew hit the clubs until 6 in the morning. It was a very different Christmas indeed and had nothing to do with Christmas at home but I would not have wished to imitated that since it would not have been the same anyways and with all the chaos and noise and tears and alcohol, it really was a very nice, very special evening. And as a good friend of mine said: Christmas is a feeling! And this feeling has never been as strong as this year:  to enjoy the small things in life: a phone call from my parents, a Christmas card form my grandparents and a big smile and an apple from my co-workers, to revive old traditions, an advent calendar, self-made Christmas cookies, and a nice pasta and pesto dinner on Christmas day and to be thankful for what you have: a great family and friends, at home and in China. 

Greetings from China I

OK, here I am....at the Beijing airport after 9 hours of flight.... I have only about 40 minutes to catch my next plane but this should be fine. When I booked my flight to Hangzhou I first got a connection to have my layover in Shanghai, but then I would have had to change airports! Not gates, airports!and since I have never been in China before I was happy to pay 50 € more to switch planes in Beijing, with arrival and departure at the same airport ;).

Besides booking my flight the only thing I had to do was applying for a Visa….no biggy, everything else is organized by the company. I get a service apartment provided, they send a driver to pick me up from the airport, easy J. You know I even get paid, which most of my fellow students who stay in Sweden can’t say about their internships so which one is the developing country? ;)

So far it looks just like Europe, well the airport looks like any other airport :p…I follow the signs that say “transits” and find myself in a massive queue. Not only that my watch says 20 minutes until boarding but also the fact that I am the only person without luggage starts to stress me out. Why the hell does everybody have their luggage with them? The Air China guy at the airport in Frankfurt did not say anything about that and even though I am flying quite frequently they always sent my suitcase to the final destination. Nevertheless I decide to check the belt and see if my suitcase has arrived…nothing….15 minutes left…I go up to a guy that looks like he is German and ask him if I need to wait for my luggage. The next 5 minutes I get 20 years of China traveling experience from three different guys with the same answer: They have no idea….you never know….

Ok what now, wait for the suitcase that might not even arrive or catch my flight? I go for the flight and hope that the suitcase will arrive eventually, hopefully ;)

On the plane to Hang Zhou I am the only person who is obviously not Asian. The staff seams nervous and exited to talk to me but when asked if I want Chinese or Western food I go for Chinese. I’m going to China and I want to experience the real deal so I better start now. In Sweden it is 00.00 o’clock, in China it is breakfast time. When I open the typical airplane food aluminium container I find a white jelly like something. Besides that there is some vacuum packed stripes that look like some sort of vegetable and a soft brown egg thingy with a comic chicken on the plastic package smiling at me.  I try the white jelly mouse but it tastes like nothing….maybe it has a slight flavour of paper. Irritated about how to eat this I try to observe the Chinese people around me and discover with surprise that they all enjoy a croissant with jam and orange juice….western food is obviously more in trend.

When I get to the airport in Hangzhou I did not even expect my suitcase to arrive anymore. However I go to the belt but nope, there are about 10 suitcases on the belt but not mine. 10 suitcases? Why is nobody traveling with luggage? The lost baggage guy copies my passport and I put down the address of the service apartment I got. He also wants to have my phone number but I only have my Swedish prepaid card in my phone….without any credit…. I heard that my office works every second Saturday as well so I just hope that this Saturday would be one of them and write down the number of the person (I have no idea if it is a man or a woman) I had email contact with. But when I get into the arrival hall there is a super nice girl waiting for me. We go pretty much straight into the city center, get incredibly good food and do a boat trip on the West lake with a beautiful view on the mountains on the other side of the lake. By the time I get home that day my suitcase is already waiting for me in our apartment. Now I am here for almost one week and nothing has changed. At the beginning you don’t really know what to expect and what will happen next. You are a bit insecure and some things get messed up, but in the end everything turns out fine J.

Magical moment

Hello everyone! In this blogpost I want to share my experience of helping out and observing when a fashion company have their collection presentations. These presentations are some of the most important presentations within a fashion company, this is the time when everyone in the company shuts down their calendar and needs to be present. The first presentation that I was observing was for the sport collection that will be out in the stores next year.  A huge room is ready for everyone to be seated, in the middle it is clear space so that the models can walk (cat-walk).  All of the designers behind the collection are standing in the front, where the head designer introduces and tells each of the designers that they have done a great job. It is normal to show a presentation about numbers and graphs, but also a video of the inspiration behind the newest collection.

When all the talking is done, each and every single garment from the new collection (the next year’s collection – always one year ahead) is presented on models, walking the cat-walk just for us within the company. Simultaneously the head designer talks about each product, giving us product specifications that we all need for different reasons in our work. For me it was very important, where I’m also helping out with the product description of each garment, for the company’s international web shop (next blogpost will be about this topic). And so the day goes, we get to know each garment – getting a thorough introduction in the latest collection. 

Another day the latest collection for menswear was going to be presented for the entire company. Here I was helping out the designers with all the work that is behind putting on a product presentation “show”. It was really exciting getting to know this part as well, dressing up and down models based on images with different looks from the collection. Everything was happening in a high speed and we needed to be quick with dressing the models, it had to be exactly the same as the images or else we could mess up the whole presentation.

For me this experience of watching and engaging in the company’s collection presentations was so much fun!  It was really intriguing being a part of the company, watching the latest fashion a year before they will even enter the store. Learning how a company gathers everyone to share the latest fashion that they all are working for - was really great to experience. I have to say that it was truly a magical moment when the lights shut down and the video of the inspiration behind the collection got played – something I never will forget.  *Goosebumps*

//Marthe