Target Week 4: Fast, Fun, and Friendly

One of Target's brand values is being "fast, fun, and friendly." Around headquarters, the acronym "FFF" (much faster than saying all three words) is used to describe both the culture and the many events planned to make Target a great place to work. As an employee, this means finishing meetings as soon as everything has been said (instead of dragging them on longer), having weekly team lunches & breakfasts, and taking the time to get to know our fellow team members.

Every Monday we have a team meeting, which always begins with a 5 minute FFF event before diving into financial updates. Last week, we raced to finish a word search for all of the categories in produce (stone fruit, mushrooms, etc.). This week, we shared our plans for the 4th of July weekend. There are also monthly FFF larger events, like last Friday's perishables mini-golf competition. Each department (produce, fresh meat, deli/bakery, etc.) designed their own par 4 hole using materials from around the office, and then we played through for the floor championship. The produce team won!

This week, as we continue to work on our project, we have had the opportunity to meet with a wide variety of people on our floor. It is really cool to have visibility to so many different roles at Target as an intern: buyers, managers, division heads, supply chain experts, organizational effectiveness team members, etc. The most common entry level job here is a Business Analyst (BA) on the Merchandise Planning team, but after spending a couple years as a BA, there are all sorts of career paths and jobs - Target is definitely an exciting place to work!

Week 3...or Week 4? Who's counting anyways...

Hi all,

This week was pretty uneventful in terms of new things happening at the show room, but in terms of epiphanies, I HAD ONE. I had a most liberating revelation this week. One of those revelations you're probably supposed to have like way before you get to college and decide you're going to business school but who cares...

Anyways so I applied to Penn thinking, well I'm not 100% sure, but I think I'd like to get into the fashion and beauty industries, maybe do some work for fashion and beauty/health magazines, anything like that. I didn't see being in the College, the Engineering school, or the Nursing school being the path to that, sooooo, I figured I'd do Wharton. I've always been interested in fashion, used to do some designing of my own. Love the cosmetology industry, I buy makeup like it's my job, so I always figured those were the avenues for me, business is good for everything so I welcomed the fact that that was where my future was headed.

As I wrote about in my last post, one of my projects at Alchimie is to do Daily Clippings, snippets of current beauty industry news. One of the primary sources for these is Womens Wear Daily, a world renowned magazine that publishes stories on the beauty,fragrance,fashion, and retail industries. I troll the website for interesting stories, and let me tell you, EVERY STORY IS INTERESTING.

But back to my revelation. I realized that I'm always telling people that I really love fashion and that I really love makeup, but it hit me this week, What do I really know about fashion and beauty? I know the big designers that everyone else knows, Marc Jacobs, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, etc , but there are hundreds of smaller designers that are just as prominent in any particular season, there are fashion houses whose staff are famous for particular styles or particularly famous lines for a particular season and much more. There is so much competition within the beauty and skincare industries, with Estee Lauder leading the charge and various other companies, both domestic and foreign, elbowing out the competition and creating room and support for themselves among consumers.

It became so clear to me this week, that to claim to have an interest in something, you have to do the research behind it. You have to put work into learning about it. I learned that despite what I claimed my interests to be, there was no way I could actually hold my ground in any type of conversation, debate, what have you on these topics.

So I've decided to spend this summer broadening my knowledge of all things beauty,retail, fashion, etc. I shall become a connoisseur of sorts, or at least try.

But that's all for now folks, til next time,

Nanette

P.S

check out the website!
http://www.wwd.com/

the subscription is a hefty price, but SO worth it.

End of Week 3: Lauren and working in-store

Hello again!

I'm reporting back on the exciting opportunities from the end of last week. On Wednesday all 36 interns went across town to 39th and 7th where the Lauren by Ralph Lauren Show Room is.

It was extremely pristine. Nothing but clear drinks were allowed onto the floor. I'm not quite sure how literally they meant that. Club soda? Tonic water? Vodka?

Along with the fact that we were seeing new styles for the fall before anyone else, it was also cool to pay attention to how the rooms were set up. The stylists have to create scenes that depict to the buyers how the clothing will be worn. They

also have separate rooms for different parts of the country. California and Florida are especially differentiated. I think we also had a great experience because Ralph Lauren has a very good relationship with Bloomingdale's. That's where he first sold clothing and is willing to do lots of exclusives for the store. If a buyer sees something they like but want to alter, Lauren is very accommodating whether it's colors, length, or size adjustments.

On Thursday all of the interns worked in the 59th Street store. Before the store opened, from 9-10am, there was a "Loss Prevention Shoplifters Fashion Show." They set up a runway surrounded by fold up chairs on the fourth floor and employees strutted down the aisle wearing the designers that have been stolen the most from the store. They were also accessorized with lots of security tags all over the clothing. The clothes they were wearing bulged with extra items stuffed underneath that they pulled out as they passed. The idea was to remind employees how important preventing shortages is, but to also have fun with it.

During the day we were each paired with a store manager to shadow. I was assigned to Mens' Suits, a department I know nothing about. It was particularly interesting because this department is comprised of extremely expensive purchases. Seeing the work that the salespeople do behind the scenes to stay in contact with their loyal customers was incredible. Whether it was sending out letters or making calls when new styles come in, the Bloomingdale's employees were on top of everything. By 5pm I could not wait to get off my feet and relax.

I'm so impressed and have newfound respect for salespeople. There's so much more to it than I ever would have guessed. They treated us all to Forty Carrots frozen yogurt after our long day. Martha, another Penn intern in the Women's RTW dept., was lovin the M&M's :)

Right now I'm working on sweepstakes and giveaways at work. Eleven winners were chosen from thousands who posted pictures of themselves on the Bloomingdale's page wearing certain items. Those eleven are being flown into New York for a weekend in August and having personal shoppers help them pick out $5,000 worth of merchandise from the store. They get all sorts of extra prizes as well, like Jimmy Choo sunglasses, Lagos jewelry, and Jo Malone fragrances.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to a photo shoot downtown where images for the upcoming fall campaign are being shot. The actress Amber Heard is the primary in the shoot. It's going to be my first time at anything like this, and I can't wait to see it!

Until next time,

Keri

Update from Marc Jacobs

Hi everyone!

My apologies for the late posting!  These first few weeks at Marc Jacobs were crazy.  I started my internship on the eve of Market, which is basically when the lines (rtw clothing, handbags, collection handbags, etc.) are beginning to be finalized and buyers from around the world are coming into see previews and place their orders.  Those first two weeks were nothing short of staying till 8 or 9 (not exactly the best idea since I'm commuting back and forth to New Jersey every day), working on the weekend, and ordering large amounts of food for the office to share.  Since I'm in the business planning department, I have been working since day one with people to edit reports and help finalize these plans.  I have also gotten to see orders coming in more recently from around the world, which has been really interesting.  Being able to see the differences (and similarities) in what people order for different countries (or even between regions of countries) is fascinating.  The orders from Asia were my favorite though; I've been studying Chinese throughout grade school and now at Penn and I love looking at trends and what's popular, especially in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.  Some of the words on the order documents even came up in Chinese, which was a huge excitement for me.

My daily tasks can include anything from editing these orders and matching them with our reports to organizing sales reports from various stores around the country.  I also put together and edit books to display past lines and present lines, with pictures and colors of each item (these are always fun to look at).  One of the more exciting things I've gotten to do is attend a sales meeting with representatives from different departments.  I listened as they discussed how the brand was doing in different department stores as well as against various competitors.  I also got to attend a viewing of the Resort 2011 line for Women's Ready To Wear at the off-site studio (normally this would be held at the headquarters, but this summer they are doing renovations). This was probably my favorite day, because not only did I get a sneak peak at what will be in stores starting in October, but the merchandisers and designers also explained their inspiration and reason for the pieces they created and the colors and materials they chose.

The energy in the office and the people who work here are great too.  Everyone is so fashionable (as you would probably expect) and no outfit I've seen so far seems too outrageous for the office.  All the employees are so obsessed with the brand--which makes for great dedication and loyalty to the company.  So far I'm absolutely loving every minute of being here.  Even if there are a few minutes of down time, there is something always coming up that needs to be done.  One thing I've learned is that you can never offer yourself and your assistance too often.  Even if it is something as simple as offering to do a coffee run, everything is appreciated.  And every task you're given is another opportuntity to learn something new! 

More updates to come!  Until next time,

Alex

Target! Week 3

Sorry for the delay! These past few weeks have flown by - it's hard to believe I've already finished a quarter of my internship!

I am working at Target Corporation this summer in the Merchandise Planning pyramid, which is located at their downtown Minneapolis headquarters. I have been very pleasantly surprised by the size and sophistication of this city; it is definitely very young and filled with fun things to do! I am living on the University of Minnesota campus with the nearly 300 other relocating summer interns.

The first couple weeks of the internship involved lots of training. The first week, our classes were fairly general, on topics from the Retail industry to Target-specific computer programs, which are used to track sales and every other metric imaginable. Last week, we were trained on the specific systems used in the Grocery division (where I'm working) and the nuances of managing the Perishables business. Since this is my first internship working in retail, I've really enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the industry and what makes Target different as a company. Target headquarters definitely has a very unique, collaborative culture, which I will talk about in an upcoming blog post. I am still absolutely amazed that the 5% of its profits Target donates to the community amounts to over $3 million a week!

All business analyst interns at Target work on a strategic group project that affects one of the divisions of the company. I am lucky enough to be using everything I've learned as an OPIM concentration (lots and lots of Excel!) working on a project related to inventory management in the Produce department. This is our second week really diving into the project, and I am already surprising myself with the amount I have learned so far. Also, one of the cool perks of working in Produce is getting to sample the products our department buys whenever a vendor comes to visit - today we got peaches and nectarines from a fruit vendor!

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

LF USA: Week 2

Hey,

Hope everyone had a lovely Father's Day weekend! While I was originally going to tell you a bit more about production and post a few cute examples of old sketches and tech packs, our LF USA Summer Internship Speaker Series guest inspired me to hold that topic off for a more boring week blog entry. Here goes:

Last Friday our entire Intern class had the pleasure of meeting Tommy Hilfiger (I don't think I need to introduce him here... as in the clothes?). Mr. Hilfiger has recently went into a partnership with Li & Fung, working on a global music merchandising company, MESH - Music Entertainment Sports Holdings. The venture will develop, market and distribute diversified collections from musical artists ranging from the Steven Tyler (who recently announced the partnership), to J.Lo and Marc Anthony (faces of the company's first deal for a fashion lifestyle launching at Kohl's this Fall). The concept is very exciting and unique, and certainly something Mr. Hilfiger is passionate about as it combines his two favorite things - music and fashion. His company is expected to collaborate with Bravado, a division of Universal Music Group, to merchandise and manufacture products such as capsule collections, licensing deals, and exclusives - especially out of Macy's. Needless to say, I am extremely jealous of those lucky few interns who were placed in the MESH division at LF, like one of my teammates who is currently working to help launch the new Rachel Zoe line (!!).

Besides his relationship to LF, Mr. Hilfiger shared with us his inspirational beginnings story and advised all designers in the room to embrace the business side of the industry, as that has been crucial to his own success. He also elaborated on his new marketing campaign, focusing on a cool, diverse family, "the Hilfigers." The whole concept is really effective in appealing to various demographics, while simultaneously elevating TH's appeal and developing positive associations to the brand. Check out the commercial below, and if you have time to kill, browse through the "Meet the Hilfigers" sections of tommy.com - they all have names, back-stories, and as expected, they're all super-hot and super-preppy...

Next week is our company picnic, celebrating the 105th anniversary of Li & Fung, so I will be sure to let you know all about it, and maybe I will finally get to my day-to-day activities in production.

xx,

Marlena

Third Week Already?

Hello All,

I figure I should probably give a run down of what my actual duties are as an intern. Well my big summer project is to redo the press pages for Alchimie. Sound simple? It's not, there are 11 years of press coverage, over 350 individual pages. Each of these are saved as pdfs and to be uploaded through the website editor, they have to be converted to jpeg files, and then uploaded individually, on both the English site and the French site. Essentially, if I can do maybe 20 a day (40 uploads in actuality) without my mind going numb, its been a good day. It's not all terrible though, I am practically teaching myself about web design and it's actually pretty interesting, I think I might take a computer class sometime in the future.

Along the same lines as that part of the press project, I have to find and link images of every article in which Alchimie is mentioned in the blogosphere. Something I definitely learned from this internship, a blog world exists beyond tumblr and blogspot! I had heard of people who were professional bloggers but I never thought that blogs were really a very strong marketing tool. Lo and behold , blogs are just as influential as magazines and newspapers in relaying news, offering critiques,compliments, lifestyle advice, etc. Blogs are a huge deal and particularly in our beauty industry, it is crucial to receive great product reviews from famous bloggers. So I have to create the blog page of the Alchimie Forever website, less tedious than creating the main press pages , but still time consuming.

These projects will probably take me the whole summer, but they're pretty much on the back burner. My more recurring tasks include Daily Clippings, essentially a digest of current beauty news. Bi-weekly, I compile particularly relevant news from various beauty industry sources. I mostly use Women Wear Daily, my new favorite website/magazine. Want to know anything about the beauty, fashion, and fragrance industries(all wildly interesting), look there. It's a costly subscription, but it is more than worth it. You can't really call yourself an expert in any of these industries without knowing the stories that the website/magazine publishes. So in looking for good stories, I come across a lot of interesting information that is constantly beefing up my knowledge of the beauty and fashion industries which I'm super interested in.

I of course also do daily administrative tasks as they come up, usually from an email from either Kate or Ada, for example, putting together training manuals, filing billing statements, assessing inventory, things like that. Later in the summer we will also be doing some more event production which I hope to also be a part of. So I'm super excited.

Also, celebrity sightings: Mary Amos, a real housewife of DC came in the store for a facial the other day !

That's all for now, ttyl.

Nanette

LF USA: Week 1

Hey guys,

I decided to wait until the end of the week to recap my experiences so far, and I am glad I did since my big summer project wasn't announced until Friday anyway. But first things first:

As you might have read in my writer bio, I am interning LF USA, a subsidiary of Li & Fung (a global supply chain management firm of which you are sure to hear about in MKTG 101). LF USA is actually a relatively new company which was created through a series of acquisition throughout the last five years, and it specializes in private label and celebrity brand apparel, kids apparel, fashion accessories, footwear and home design. As a production intern, I have been placed in the Youth Apparel Group working with urban brands such as Rocawear (Jay Z's line), Enyce (extension of Sean John), and Beyonce's Dereon. I will be helping out with managing all aspects of the production process from inception through completion as well as working closely with buyers and designers for fit, construction, trims and color approval -

And now to the exciting news! In addition to my day-to-day activities at Kids Headquarters, I will also be working on an extensive group project with other interns from various departments in the company. We will be trying to identify business opportunities within e-commerce both in existing markets LF brands already compete as well as in original-concept platforms we come up with ourselves. To make things interesting, our team of ten is competing against five other groups, each of which has been assigned a similar project (other two topics include sustainability and organic growth). In August, we will be presenting our findings for Rick Darling, the president of LF USA, and the winning team will receive a $1,000 bonus for each participating member. Needless to say, the competition is on, and I can't wait to get together with my team for our first meeting (not in a GSR, so odd!). We have a great mix of students with backgrounds in business (Pepperdine, UVA), merchandising (Indiana, FIT), and design (RISD, Pratt, Otis). So far, it has been absolutely wonderful hearing everyone's different perspectives on our assignment and just hearing about everyone's school programs and past job experiences.

Either way, I will leave it at that for now. I will probably try to do weekly posts to keep this fresh (I am such a a newbie blogger, in case you couldn't tell), so unless I run into Jay Z and absolutely have to share, see you next week!

xx

- Marlena

First Week at Alchimie Forever

Day 5 , 6/9/2011

Hi Guys,

This summer I'm working at Alchimie Forever, an upscale skincare line located in Georgetown, DC, right by Georgetown University and the Potomac river. It's a great place to be, for anyone who has ever been to Georgetown, it's such a pretty place with a million and one upscale boutiques, shops and eating places. I love it so much, it's like an hour away from my house but I never spent much time there when I was younger.

So I'm Alchimie Forever's sole summer intern and its a pretty sweet deal. Despite being an international company, operating out of both DC and Switzerland and selling to customers in Canada, France, the US and Switzerland, the DC office pretty much runs like a start-up. In the office there's me, Kate, the assistant, and the CEO Ada Polla (look her up and follow her on twitter and facebook!). And since Ada travels ALL THE TIME, from beauty conventions to client meetings to distributor meetings and so on, out of the 5 days I've worked there, she's only be there twice. It's a busy job being the female CEO of an international brand.

My first 5 days were pretty good, I'm still learning the ropes, trying to learn some of the the applications that Kate the assistant uses, how to do all the backoffice stuff so that I can make her job a little easier, and ultimately at the end of the summer take over when she'll be gone for two weeks on a trip to England with her grad. Ps, Kate is awesome, she's only 23 and whenever our boss Ada isn't there, we turn up the showroom stereo and jam out to Adele and Natasha Bedingfeld. Good times.

The highlight of my first week was definitely on my second day when the store's esthetician came in to train local spa workers on how to use the store's products and me and Kate got complimentary facials! I've never had a facial before and all I can say is, MAGIC. She gave me a neck massage and hand massage too, and with the candles flickering and mellow music in the background, I was just so at peace for the 30-40 minute process.

Although the position is unpaid, I'm definitely getting paid in products. The line is relatively expensive, with items ranging from $40-$91, but almost every other day, they give me a product to try for free. I know they want to convert me into a regular customer, but for now I'm just appreciating all the free stuff. Their products make your skin feel amazing, and if I was richer, I'd be a regular.

I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the summer, I'm going to be responsible for doing a lot of market research and event planning which is great because event producing and marketing are the reasons why I applied to Wharton in the first place. It's going to be a wonderful experience and I hope to share it all with you guys. Thanks for reading, more to come!

-Nanette

Day 3: "Turn-In" Meeting

Hi everyone! Today was my third day working in the Integrated Marketing Dept. at Bloomingdale's. I'll be working on anything that involves outside parties that don't directly sell product to Bloomingdale's. Here are some examples of projects I'll be involved in: Bloomingdale's attempt to break the "most simultaneous makeovers" record for the Guinness Book of World Records, NBC pairing with Bloomingdale's to introduce their fall lineup of shows alongside the Bloomingdale's fall lines of clothing, and "the little pink book."

Today we had several meetings on the little pink book. It is a book that comes out in October to raise money and awareness for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The book includes interviews with doctors and celebrities who are breast cancer survivors. And of course, it also contains lots of fashion.

The meetings today were called "turn-in" meetings. Buyers from every department brought exclusive samples from designers to "turn-in." These are items they would like photographed and pages allotted for in the book. We saw a wide variety of products that have yet to be manufactured from the following departments: winter accessories, men's and women's RTW (ready-to-wear), home goods, fine jewelry, and watches. The buyers brought clothing and jewelry from brands such as Echo, DKNY, Aqua, Splendid, Ralph Lauren, The North Face, Hunter, Joe's Jeans, Paige Jeans, True Religion, David Yurman, and Judith Ripka.

Along with the fashion turn-ins, my team turned in the outside vendor pages. We presented auctions of exclusive products, interviews with celebrities, and custom-made products whose purchase will contribute to breast cancer research.

My favorite part was seeing the outfits put together and listening to the discussions between the creative team and the buyers about how the items will be photographed and displayed in the book. Interesting points were if the outfits would be shot "on body" or "still," which part of an ensemble (within an outfit or jewelry set) deserved the focus, and how to choose the centerpiece while taking into account monetary contributions from the brand along with trendiness of the item.

Well, that's all for now - thanks for reading! I'll post again soon :)

Keri