Week 3: Food Bank and Central CEO Address

Hello again!

I can't believe it's already my third week working at Bloomingdale's! The time has really flown by. The past couple of days we've gotten to participate in some cool things. Yesterday all of the interns took a bus up to the Bronx where we boxed food at the Food Bank for the afternoon. It wasn't quite retail, but I'm glad that there was a community service aspect to the internship. They said that we boxed twice the amount of food they were expecting. Who knew we were such efficient sorters and boxers?

This morning all central Bloomingdale's employees came together on the 5th floor of the 59th St store for the Central CEO Address (I posted a picture below). Chairs were lined up all along the aisles of high end clothing and there was a stage in the center with big TV monitors all around. The CEO, Michael Gould, began, and then each of the GMMs (general merchandising managers) spoke about which brands and products had done well in the month of May. They are the pyramid heads of (1)accessories/fine jewelry/cosmetics, (2)RTW, (3)men/children, and (4)home. Brands that did really well in May are Chanel, Tory Burch, Marc by Marc Jacobs, J Brand, Aqua, and many others. It was cool to see the exact styles that sold the best. They even said that Bloomingdale's had eight $8,500 Chanel double-breasted tweed coats in stock and sold four of them!

In the afternoon I sat in on several meetings about the upcoming fall partnership between Bloomingdale's and NBC. One of the meetings was run by an "augmented reality" company who can create virtual images that appear on the screen of an ipad, iphone, or mac and attach themselves to whatever is in front of the camera. A simple example is bunny ears: you align your face once with an axis on the screen and then the bunny ears will look like they're actually around your head and stay on if you move around; they won't merely appear above your head if you're in the exact right spot. No more "bend down a little...to the left a little..."-type pictures. These can get way more complicated and eventually include stars putting their arms around customers in front of the camera.

Tomorrow the interns are going to the Lauren show room where we'll see their fall line. I'm really excited because my being in marketing has prevented me from going to buying meetings. This is my shot to see behind the scenes of the buying world.

On Thursday every intern will shadow a store manager and will work in the 59th St store from 9am-5pm. For all of you insiders reading this blog, I'll give you a 99% discount!

Just kidding - I don't think that would make me a very good salesperson. Hopefully I'll do okay.

Until next time,

Keri