LF USA: Overall Intern Experience

My experience at Li & Fung was very different from what I expected. I decided to intern there in production because it was a part of the business I knew nothing about and what better place to learn about it than at the biggest sourcing company in the world? Since my internship was at LF USA, Li & Fung’s American wholesale subsidiary, I also ended up learning a lot about sales, design, product development (especially private label and proprietary), and brand management. It was very interesting to gain a better understanding of a company primarily built on acquisitions of smaller apparel manufacturers and the way in which companies that fall under the LF USA interact with one another. For instance, companies such as Oxford and Regatta or Kids Headquarters and the recently acquired Fishman & Tobin are still direct competitors even though they are now technically part of one company.

Overall, it was a great learning experience, especially because of the way the internship was structured. Apart from day-to-day work within each one of our divisions, interns were assigned groups of ten and given a project which we later presented to top executives at the company. My team’s project was on e-commerce, and more specifically on how LF USA can expand its online business. Learning about this growing, exciting part of the marketplace definitely influenced my career decisions moving forward. While I’ve learned that online commerce (as any retail) is hard to get right, I’ve also realized that there are still massive amounts of opportunity and innovation on the e-commerce horizon, and that I would really love to be a part of it in the future!

If you have any interest in reading up more on what other Li & Fung interns had to say about the program, check out The Future of Fashion blog sponsored by Fashion Scholarship Fund (which is how most of us were connected to LF in the first place!).

xx,

Marlena