At the Handelslabbet

The renovation at the Handelslabbet is almost complete. Opening exhibition for the Retail lab has moved a bit further until October and hopefully things will settle down until then as more people would get vaccinated. There are many interesting things going on at the Handelslabbet. Technologies such as Virtual Reality devices etc. will be accessible for the people who will come to visit Handelslabbet. The posters I was working on, will soon be ready for the display at the Lab. We are looking forward to a very interesting window display for the lab, as well.

While working on my field study report, I was trying to link AI with circular economy within clothing and fashion industry and it gave me very limited number of articles. Among those, most were not even relevant. When I broadened my topic, then I was getting thousands of articles. That's when I realized how tricky systematic literature review could be.

During this whole internship period, I learned a lot. I read about and met many researchers who are working at very interesting disciplines such as applications of AI and VR in Textiles and Fashion industry.

I hope this Retail Lab will inspire students and companies to be involved in groundbreaking research areas. Hope to see most of you at the Re-opening exhibition in October.

Good luck for the new semester 😊

The Final Countdown (3/3)

Hope everyone has had amazing summer so far!  

With the last leg complete nearly complete, I'm surprised how much I've discovered about discourse analysis. It was not an easy ride but an adventurous one. Through the literature concerning the use of activist discourse, the topic that can be explored further in many ways. It has been a journey delving into discourse theory thinkers such as Foucault and Butler and being fascinated by the way they define discourse and the subject (self). So far I have gathered new skills through the coding software NVivo, which helped to organise the data and aid in my analysis. I look forward to the next stage of the course and opportunity to put what I learnt over the internships into practice. 

/N

Final Digital Marketing Update

 Hi all,

Here I am, finally writing my final blog post for the field study. My last week's in my internship have been proving very busy as I take on more responsibilities, even at the end! Though my field study project is on content marketing my role expanded beyond this so content marketing became only a small part of what I was doing. Instead, I was focusing on content marketing management, strategy, email marketing, Google ads and even some merchandising management, a real mixed bag!

I decided, in the end, to do a content analysis to determine how well the company's content fit into a content marketing framework; I began with De Plessis' 2015 content marketing framework as a basis for the coding schematic as well as my literature review on the use of core values to inform marketing strategy and used Ho et al. (2015) strategic content marketing framework to analyse the company's strategic content marketing process. In doing so I was attempting to explore how the company uses content marketing strategy to inform their content marketing creation and output and how do the core values of the brand inform the content marketing strategy. 

Many academics have outlined the need for consistent, quality content that aligns with the brand values, so while this case study did not set out to develop a new theory it did provide a rich and deep insight into how content marketing strategy works in the context of a fashion-tech start-up in its infancy.

I have enjoyed my time with this company and though I sometimes felt the breadth of work I took on was not totally relevant to my project, I did learn a lot that I believe will be useful in the next year of this master's and in my career.

Well done everyone on their field study, looking forward to the new semester already.

Slán go bhaile, Fiona Byrne

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

21st Century Tailoring (3/3)

 Happy Monday!

My last week at Blugiallo is over and summer vacation is finally here. It's been quite hectic last few weeks filled with presentations of the results from the survey. I've presented the material to everyone at the company and their partners, ranging from web developers to social media strategists and PR agencies. I'm super thankful that I got the opportunity to "meet" all these interesting, skilled individuals and to get a chance to present my work to them as well. From the feedback I got, it seems like the survey and the analyzed results will be useful in the future development of the company and that it will be used as a foundation when for example enhancing the UX on the website and in social media strategies. This spring has been challenging in many ways, but when getting this type of feedback it's a recipe that hard work pays off. 

Now I'm moving into my summer house on the west coast for a month, then it's time to get ready for new adventures in Stockholm! 

Wishing you all a fantastic summer<3 

Three weeks working with collection launch (1/3)

Hi all!

My name is Liisi. I study at the programme of Textile Value Chain Management, and I have previously completed a BA in Fashion Design.

Three weeks ago, I started my internship at a small, Gothenburg-based, women’s slow fashion brand that focuses on knitwear and high-quality natural materials. As the launch of SS22 collection is close by, my tasks thus far have focused on the sales material of the new collection, such as creating a sales catalogue and material book for the upcoming collection. Besides that, I have been working with the brand’s online showroom and an earlier collection’s sales catalogue. Earlier this week we also had a studio day photo shooting the entire new collection on a model. It was interesting to see how it all came together having had the opportunity to observe the planning of the shooting day, choosing a model and logistics.

Besides my hands-on tasks I have had the opportunity to observe the company and have conversations regarding the brand’s sales base and how they communicate with their customers. This has given me some base information and factors to consider regarding my upcoming customer survey/segmentation project that I will do for the company. The same project also acts up as the base for my field study paper where I will write about the process of small business ’customer segmentation.

Hope you all will have a lovely mid-summer!

Inherently flame retardant regenerated cellulose fibres - 3rd update

Hi guys,

It is time to share my last post of Research Assistant Internship with you all regarding inherently flame-retardant regenerated cellulose fibers.
Regenerated cellulose fibers represent the most important derivatives of biomass comparatively cotton & synthetic fibers due to negative impact on environment & finally human health. In another way, application of nanotechnology in the textile industry has grown rapidly due to their unique, distinctive properties and allowing textiles to become multifunctional without affecting the inherent properties. Silica nanoparticles incorporated viscose has become one of the great examples beyond the endow ordinary products with their significant qualities. Although SNPs have the potential to benefit society, their interaction with biological systems and potential toxic effects must be carefully considered since they have totally different characteristics compared to the bulk form.
I did a literature search of ecotoxicity aspects of silica-rich viscose & its process chemicals as my 1^st research question and then observed the usage of toxic, explosive, and flammable Carbon disulfide (CS2). This leads to exhaust air, wastewater, and the degradation of the cellulose backbone concurrent in the viscose process. Other than that, NaOH and H2SO4/Sulfuric acid are adding during the regenerated cellulose manufacturing process. Secondly, conducted the laboratory test to check silica leachability from invented viscose fiber. Received an unexpected result with the Si content and evidenced that it also has a health risk when exposing to manufactures as well as consumers, while creating a lot of direction for further investigation. 
It was a great experience for me to work with the RISE team & able to gather new knowledge interestingly. And hope you also had a good time during your internship & let’s celebrate our summer vacation after ppt and the report submission.

Hope to see you all soon.

Thanks,
Dula