Last Entry

     I still have a couple more weeks to go interning at Les Nouvelles, and I definitely feel more attuned to the business than I did when I started. I'm a lot more familiar with the merchandise, I can answer most customer emails without having to ask Mackenzie or Starr for assistance, I know how to print out the pick lists, packing slips, and shipping labels by myself, and I unpack and process vendor shipments with ease and efficiency. My initiative to do tasks without having to be asked is definitely not lacking. While LaShay and I have been taking notes of inventory and website discrepancies, I figured out that the best way to take care of it is to update the product quantities in the backend website myself so that Mac, Starr, and Haven don't have to deal with it. Overall, I'd definitely say that I've been an effective intern.
      Even with those things in mind, I still wish I had been given the opportunity to help style fashion shoots and suggestion product pages for the website. There are two weeks left however, so I may still be able to do one or both of those things. When it comes to communication, I really only talk if I'm asked a question, I have a question to ask, or I'm telling Mackenzie or Starr something of importance. Most conversation among the full-timers and freelancers are about their families, friends, and boyfriends that've already been previously established, so I don't feel I really have any place in those conversations. So basically, I keep to myself.
     While working here, I've learned that just because I don't like a certain piece of clothing, shoe, style, etc doesn't mean that it's not popular with most of the customer base. At the beginning, while packing up something, I'd like "Why on earth would anyone wear this?" But when it comes to fashion, if you're not supplying what the customers are demanding, even if you don't like it yourself, your business will fall flat.

Business as Usual

     I believe that I forgot to mention that about a month ago, we brought a new intern into the mix. Her name's LaShay, and she's a grad student at SCAD. She basically does what I do, though for the past week or so she's been mostly occupied with going through every piece of inventory in the office and checking that it's actually on the Les Nouvelles site for customers to see and purchase (and vice versa, making sure that everything that's on the site is actually in the office.) For some reason, we've been having a lot of problems with items showing up properly on the site, so Starr, Haven, and Mackenzie are manually going through our back-end website to check that items that weren't showing up on the e-commerce site are now properly represented.
     Katie still hasn't said a word to me herself about the fact that she's leaving at the end of August. Mackenzie says that she's most likely trying to figure out the game plan for what's going to happen before saying anything to us as a group. In the meantime, we still get vendor shipments almost every day, and I make sure that the contents match the in-voice, I bring up the smallest size of each item up to the studio so that they can be shot, and I put the rest of the merch in their proper places. We still have orders every day that need to be picked, packed, and shipped. In fact, there's a flash sale going on until midnight tonight, so Monday will be all about getting all of those orders taken care of.
     As far as our merchandise goes, we sell what I consider to be beautiful and unique pieces from brands that you can't find everywhere else. It gives that feeling of exclusivity and speciality. We have a wide range of casual to dressy apparel, shoes, lingerie, swimwear, shoes, bags, hats, and jewelry. This coat by Rag & Bone is for Fall 2015, and it's so beautiful. It makes me very impatient for fall!

     My training has been very touch and go while I've been here. I'd be shown how to pick out items for orders, pack them, answer customer emails, etc and then I'd take over from there. Obviously, I'd ask questions if I was confused about something, but for the most part I've been pretty self-sufficient.
     I've been very lucky in that I haven't really had to "deal" with anyone here. There's usually only 5 or 6 of us in the office at a time, and we're all very easy to work with. No attitudes, no drama, nothing to hamper us doing our jobs.
    

Unfortunate News...

     My supervisor Mackenzie told me when I got to the office this morning that the company is closing at the end of August because Katie, a co-founder and the buyer, is relocating to New York because of her husband's job transfer. I was in shock; I didn't see this coming at all. Now Mac has to find a new job after five years, and now I don't really have the opportunity to participate in creative decisions. We won't really have a plan of action regarding the remaining inventory as well as incoming shipments from vendors until probably next week. My guess is that we'll have either a huge blow-out sale or several sales one right after the other to sell off as much merchandise as possible and then liquidate the rest.
     I'll still be getting my full 150 hours worth of work, but it definitely puts a damper on the rest of my time there knowing that soon after the semester starts that Les Nouvelles will be closed for good. It's a fantastic online boutique, and knowing that the website will be gone in a couple months makes me sad. I just know that I'll do whatever I can to make the process go as smoothly as possible and help in whatever way I can.
     Our target customer is women in their early 20s to late 40s, women that are unique and like to pair up a $300 jacket with a $10 t-shirt. They like to mix it up with designers and price points. We don't really have advertising campaigns; our only social media outlets are Facebook and Instagram. Instagram seems to fit our customers better. After one of our posts featured a celebrity wearing a certain item that we had in stock, we got two orders for that item. The Facebook page on the other hand doesn't have as many posts, and I feel that if there were more that we'd see a surge in new customers. I think maybe an Outfit of the Day daily post would be a good idea. 

Halfway There!

So at this point, I'm halfway done with my internship; the time really has flown by. I've pretty much gotten everything down to a science; I have my method of packing up orders, I always start off the day by checking and replying to customer emails. I always try and look for more work to do once orders are taken care of, mainly reorganizing merchandise. My supervisor Mackenzie even shared the "Buys" with me, which are the spreadsheets of everything that we've ordered from vendors for the pre-fall and fall/winter seasons.

The only thing I haven't been satisfied with is the creative side of the company. I haven't been involved with any of the photoshoots or styling. Perhaps it's because I'm never there when we shoot new items and samples. I'll be sure to ask Mackenzie about being more involved with that after my 4th of July vacation. I even expressed interest in sitting in on the last meeting, but she said since there was private employee things involved I couldn't. However, she did say I could be a part of the next creative meeting! I don't know when that is, hopefully soon.

My First Month

     I'm working at a very small company based in Atlanta (West Midtown to be exact) called Les Nouvelles; it's a very lovely online boutique with great clothing and accessories that are chic as well as unique. When I say it's very small, I truly mean it: there are only three full-time employees that work there, and one of them, Molly (co-founder) works from New York, so I've only met her once. Katie is the other co-founder, and she's also the buyer. Mackenzie, my supervisor, is the Operations Manager, and she's in charge of pretty much everything. There's Kim who comes in a few days a week to do our accounting and two freelancers, Starr and Haven, who do whatever Mac and Katie need them to do. Then there's me, the only intern. (There was another intern, Emily, who'd been there for quite a while, but she left my third week in.) So unfortunately, they could only offer me 150 hours instead of the 300 I was hoping for, but I'm quite grateful for the opportunity to learn more about how small businesses operate.

     My days at LN are unstructured, but yet pretty straight forward. My every day duties include pulling items for orders and then packing them up; unpacking shipments from vendors and customer returns. I've done this so often that by now I just take initiative and do them without having to be asked. I'll also do tasks such as steaming samples for photoshoots, answering customer emails, updating inventory on Harpers Bazaar's website (we have a kind of partnership with them where a portion of our merchandise is sold on their online shop, but their inventory list doesn't automatically get updated when something gets sold, so we have to do that manually.) I've also had to research other online retailers for price matching purposes.

     We're also trying to attempt a storage makeover as a bunch of the merchandise we have are stacked on shelves with no clear sorting or labeling system, so we've started looking at new shelving units and storage bins. However, no clear starting point has been made, so hopefully that'll get started within the next week.

I have a few pictures I took of the office/warehouse. I did say it was small!