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!