Katherin Roulston - Apparel Summer Internship Part 2

I remember negotiating my start and end dates and thinking that twelve weeks would take forever – but not at all. I have four weeks left and this internship and summer are flying.

There’s a new intern from Marymount working with me. She had no idea Tech had the apparel program it does and asked me if I wanted to study fashion why I didn’t attend Marymount. I had to laugh and ask her the same thing – I guess to each their own (and in my own opinion, Tech).

I finally learned to monogram using the silhouette cameo vinyl machine! I have been waiting for this day since I started – the girls thought my enthusiasm was sarcastic, and I had to clarify that no, the vinyl machine is some seriously thrilling technology. So thrilling in fact, that the department should get one!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monogramming aside, I’ve been pulling and pitching a lot of jewelry looks lately. I was asked to pull for our Resort 2015 catalog and given a Lilly lookbook as inspiration. That was fulfilling; rather than merchandising and putting tortoise with tortoise and styles with similar styles, this was more whimsical. The second jewelry pulling-and-pairing task was at the request of the Fornash buyers in Atlanta. They thought that our arm candy sets done in school colors would sell well, so the interns had to figure out how many bracelets and which styles would make a good set. We then pitched and edited our ideas, then bagged the sets for sale.  

I’m much more QuickBooks proficient at this point, I can enter items into Point of Sale (POS) on the retail floor, and know how to change an order or backorder in the system. I learned how to process backorders after I call the customers about them, so I can complete more of the process. There is a long checklist of how exactly to do it (everything at Fornash is well labeled and stored in a bin), which I prefer because I would hate to get into the system and mess it all up!

I’ve worked the retail floor less lately, there’s been so much to do in the back. It’s high tradeshow season, so there have been samples to pull and tag and edits to be made from the last show. I’ve done more merchandising when I do work retail, which is rewarding. It’s nice to see something you’ve tweaked and edited for hours be well received by customers, who stop outside the store and get drawn in by the display that you curated.

It’s childish but my favorite part of working with fashion jewelry is when new product comes in. A big box (of three) shows up with Chinese characters on it, excessively taped and bound. The import forms are on the outside in a clear pouch, and you can’t cut through them when opening the box. The jewelry has to be counted and quality checked, then put into it’s “home” in wholesale. Right away, one of each colorway will go out to the “test kitchen” retail floor to see how it sells. Lately, the new products have been immensely popular with a wide age range – a grandmother ran, and I mean ran, into the store to buy one of the most blingy and fabulous necklaces we make. The next day when we restocked, a husband came in and bought it for his wife’s birthday. This guy was thankful we were in his local mall, because he mentioned something about “last minute gift” and “forgot”.

Each week I’ve been assigned to take inventory of the ceramic trays we sell. We carry a small and a large option in five colorways, and then a small option of two different styles, a diamond and pearl detail in the center. Trays have to be counted, and checked against how many orders there are to fill in QuickBooks. The difference must be ordered, with some extra to hold in inventory. In addition, if any trays are already “pulled” or set aside to fill an order, they and the order aren’t counted in the inventory process.

Before the show in Atlanta begins, Steph wants to call our sales leads to try to drum up business, offer them a discount code for their first order, and see if the company will be attending the tradeshow. Essentially I have a script and have to cold call different stores. I thought I’d hate this, but it isn’t so bad. After I make the call and get my information, I enter it into my spreadsheet I have to send a follow-up email to everyone I called. It certainly keeps an intern busy.

I want to say what my average day is like, but really there isn’t one. For me, that’s a positive.