Last post

So, it’s time for my last blog post!
The report is finished and the 10 weeks of working on my individual field study are officially over! It has been a valuable experience to make a project based on a real company and I have learned a lot. The field study has provided me with more knowledge of how a fashion company could operate and how the total business model and value chain could look like. The purpose of my study was to explore opportunities for improving the current business model (to be more circular), which have given me a deeper understanding for how different factors influence business decisions. I feel like I’ve learned to see “the big picture”.

Hope you all had a good time on your internships or projects ☺ and now, have a great summer!!

Second update

Hi guys!

Long time no see!  I´ve been quite busy with work and my internship. Last (and my first) time I checked in here I had just started my internship. Since that I have contacted their suppliers to map down all first- and second-tier suppliers to get a whole picture of their supply chain. I am doing this in order to see if anything could be improved regarding time, costs and quality. I am now waiting for responses and will update you how it all went soon!

Talk to you soon!

Ann

Last note

Soooo my internship is over, I've had a great time working as a stylist assistant! I learned a lot working with stylists, models, photographers make up artists etc. And its been so much fun, I got to do a lot of the pictures that is published online and on social medias.
I've also been involved in the online store - department since that is the team I belonged to. So i learned a lot about managing an online store, and believe me it's a lot! Great people, great company and great knowledge.

And I'm happy to be spending the rest of the summer here evolving my skills!

Wishing you all a great summer and hope all of your internship have been good!

Snapchat

Last but not least I would like to talk a little bit about Snapchat. This is for many retailers new and exciting way to communicate to their customers and since the marketing department at Jollyroom wants to stay innovative and in forefront, there was no other option than to start snapping! 

So what is Snapchat really about? I guess most of you have it as a personal way of communication and the same goes for companies. It is a way to be more personal and connect like friends more than a company. Our digital world is changing and pictures give a higher scope than texts nowadays. As for Jollyroom, Snapchat is suppose to spread joy and laughs to the friends and followers.  Use a lot of emojis, colors and funny expressions so as to create a relationship. Since there is no way to calculate or analyze the number of followers or unfollowers at Snapchat the best way to measure the effect of your work is to try to engage and make the followers interact with you. For instance by screen shooting a snap and color it or to be creative and paint on it and thereafter ask them to send it back to you. Sometimes it might be difficult to engage people without giving them any increased value for the effort and therefore competitions is a good and rewarding way to connect and create relationships with the followers. 

Another way to increase value is through Snapchat takeovers, which means that the account is run by an external person that would be of high interest for the followers. That could be bloggers, an expert in some area or a certain department showing off something cool or behind the scene. People are curious and often wants to know the secrets behind your company and Snapchat is the perfect tool for that. In order to be successful it is like with everything else, you need to have a set strategy and structure for the content of the week so as to fill every snap with an increased value and maintain or increase the number of views every day. Lastly, stick to you strategy and keep track of the scope and result from different posts - in this way you will get to know and understand your customers! 

Hope you all have had a great field study! Wish you all a wonderful summer - see you in September! 

My last note

My eight weeks at North Bend ended a while ago, but I am still sitting here which makes me very happy !

During these weeks I have learned so much and seen every step, how many times a collection have been turned inside out, changed and changed again. I have seen the ideas develop to real garments and later shoot and put on the website. I have meet the store owners, designed underwear, worked in store, received samples over and over again to in the end be correct. On the same time have I seen how the brand have expanded and started working with European countries, and I am in charge of that contact when it comes to delivering samples and get it all together. I have had freedom when it comes to photoshoots and been in charge from the idea to the final put on the website.

With all the responsibilities and bigger tasks I really feel like I have become a part of this brand and I am enjoying my time so much here!

These weeks have been filled with new assignments, lots of fun and new knowledge, and I am sure the rest of the summer will continue that way.

Enjoy your holidays!

Assortment council

Last week on Thursday and Friday we had meetings with a few stores to hear their comments on the SS17 collection. We started with a review of the sales numbers of both North Bend and the external brands sold in store. The owners of the stores commented and brought up questions they had and what customers had commented in store, what they through was missing in the collections and so on. Later we moved on to looking at our own collection and the external collections. There were discussions about what colors was most wanted in store and sold best, and how well North Bend fitted together with the rest of the brands. Some products we chose to remove from the collection as it became clear that either the customers or the stores wanted the items. In other cases products were added as they had a huge demand in store. Pricing and campaigns were as well discussed and all the clothing was put in different assortments.

This was two very interesting days when the time just flew by, and on Friday I left the office with much more knowledge and understanding than before.

Some old notes from my Internship at North Bend that might be time to publish

During the last weeks a lot of things has happen and this was one of the them:

Yesterday I started with an interesting and fun assignment, I was set to design the pattern for men’s underwear Autumn/Winter 2017. Three patterns were needed and I started right away. I got to refresh my knowledge in illustrator as well. The patterns are ready by now, but I still need to work on the construction, to make it possible to do an allover print. More what happen yesterday is that we set up our clearance sale point here in the office and I went through the product descriptions I wrote for Autumn/Winter 2016, so they are ready to be sent in.

Hi everyone!

My internship at Jollyroom ended a couple of weeks ago, and now it´s time to reflect about my learnings during the 8 weeks. One of the experiences that I will take with me from Jollyroom is the insight of the structure of the company, and how the different departments and employees work with each other. It was really interesting to see all the different processes, from putting orders of products at the buying department, see the products arrive at the stock and then finally, the products end up at the web shop available for customers. Then, the marketing department make sure that the products get the right attention in social media.

My internship will definitely help me in my future career, with experience from a growing ecommerce business and working within a buying department.

I wish you all a wonderful summer!

/Ellinor

When something ends – something new begins

The past ten weeks went quickly and our field study project for Stahard is now over. This project was a very interesting combination of research and real working life. We got to known the eye tracking tool which can help online retailers to understand about the ‘why reasons’ of consumers’ behavior and areas of interest on their websites. 

In fact, that was exactly what we were up to with this project, trying to understand and investigate the ‘why’ reasons of Stayhards’ consumers’ navigation al behavior. We found some differences between different consumer groups as well as ‘common lines’ in consumers’ behavior. If you are interested of our project and report just keep your eyes on SIIR’s (Swedish Institute for Innovative Retailing) webpage – you will find the there later. 

You might wonder how our presentation for the company went yesterday. We are happy to answer – it went well :) We could give some new viewpoints of consumer behavior for Stayhard and some ideas for the future research, from which we will choose the topic for our new project during this summer. Yeah, we’ll continue our collaboration with Stayhard over the summer. So we can say that all the work paid off and we are looking forward to the next challenge.  

Have an amazing summer everyone!

-Niina & Nelli-

Busy, busy, busy

Hello everyone!

This is only my second post, woopsie, but it've been crazy busy! (Also, you all know, I'm the queen of procrastination).

My work at FNG evolved like crazy the past weeks, from doing some research (side)projects to having a fulltime role in the start up of an important buying project.
I'm now working mostly with the orders, sending them to the suppliers and negotiating payment and delivery terms. The business unit (Miss Etam) that I'm doing this for is from the Netherlands, and new at FNG Group, so every two weeks we're travelling to the Netherlands to have long discussions about the new way of working.
This is all super interesting, having contact with people all over the world, brainstorming about efficient processes in ordering garments etc.

Besides this big project, I'm still helping a collegue to map the whole developing process at FNG. So from styling and developing the garments untill the moment it is collection introduction. This is also super cool to do, because this way I get a full insight in the whole process. So many elements are important, it's crazy!

So lunch break is over, time to start working again!
I'll stay 2 more months than planned at my internship, so the 2 blogpost will follow slowly ;-)

Hope you all had a super fun internship and enjoy your summer!!!!

See you all soon!
Fien