skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I'm slacking on this whole blogging thing. Last week was long, especially the days. Well, they went by fast, but I left for the office at the usual time 6:30am but stayed in the office later, like 6pm, so that means catching a later train which leads to me not being home until somewhere around the 8pm marker. Oh, well. I'm getting my hours in at least which I'm excited to report is somewhere in the 120 range! Pretty impressive if I do say so myself!! It's going by so much faster than I would have ever expected. Being busy while I'm at the office definitely helps.
Since the last time I was on here I've taken on a few more projects at Nautica. On Mondays, not only do I run the track rw reports, but I also update the markdown recap, which I taught myself how to do. Again, I'm pretty impressed with myself. The markdown recap is a report of all the season lines that are out that are then broken down into departments, ie. outerwear, dresses, knits, wovens, sweaters, denim, pants, shorts/skirts, etc. It lists the retail price, the WOS or weeks of supply, EOW (end of week) inventory, & any other special markdowns taken to a certain department or style. All of that information, with the help of some numbers from the track rw reports, calculates to the average price the garment is actually selling at & how much build the company is making. Then it sent to everyone in the office as a reference to how well business was over the past week.
Another sweet deal I get to take part in is line review. Line review means I get to go to the Nautica office uptown where the HR, marketing, & design teams are & preview the sketches & ideas for the upcoming season. Tomorrow will be my second line review meeting for summer 2011. It's really cool to watch the designers walk through their ideas, sketches, & boards & hear the explanation behind everything. Once line review is done, line adoption will take place later this week where the line will be accepted & the buyers will start to gear up for another season of assortment & buying. I came to Nautica at just the right time to catch a glimpse of the entire process of seeing a new season beginning & the middle of another getting ready to be bought. It's been an eye opener that's for sure. I love being involved in all the meetings, too. Most people think of coffee making when it comes to the fashion intern world, but Nautica is giving me a chance to be hands on & I couldn't have asked for a better place to complete an internship.
Now to the fun part of what I did today! While I was out doing my research for my competitive shopping project, I decided to skip on over to a little place that some of you may or may not have heard of-Kleinfeld. Yes, home of the TLC show 'Say Yes to the Dress'! The best part about it is it's only about 2 blocks from my office!! Awesome! I don't know why but I was so excited when I headed back to the office with all my Kleinfeld pictures. I wish I could have went inside, but you have to have appointments & stuff so I'm not for sure how that works. Regardless, a very cool experience. Maybe someday I'll get to go back & actually go inside!!
Tomorrow is Wednesday already! I'm telling you, the weeks fly by. This weekend I think I'm going up to New Brunswick to Rutgers University to visit a friend who is a Sig Kap there. I can see part of the campus from the train on my way home from the office every day & it's very pretty. Making it through the weeks have been my main focus for the most part. The sooner August gets here the better.
So, it's been about 2 weeks at Nautica. It seems like just yesterday I was taking the train into NYC for my first day. Anyways, that's probably enough reminiscing. In the past week, I've been getting more involved with everything that's going on in the office. Every Monday from here on, I get to run the Track RW reports. These are basically a run down of every division & product & how it's selling, what it's selling at, & how many weeks left of inventory we have left. The reports are pretty long. By the time I get all of them printed it's about 70 pages, give or take. Everyone on the women's team, (& I'm sure several other teams), use these reports to see how sales are going & I will also use these reports to do the Mark Down Recap report every week. I'll be putting numbers into excel sheets to calculate inventory & the price points at which everything is selling. All in all, I'm leaning WAY more than I have ever learned in the classroom at school. I'm not sure if I haven't taken the right classes yet, but being an intern in the women's buying office has opened my eyes to so many different things.
Another exciting thing that I got to do at Nautica, was be a part of the assortment building. Usually, the associate & assistant buyers sort out all the CADs for the season that is being worked on. They put them into certain delivery date schedules & then the senior buyer watches the other 2 buyers explain the flow & selections made for that particular season. Lucky little me was assigned to sweaters. I went over the numbers from the previous year & analyzed which styles would work best in the upcoming line. I really enjoyed looking over everything & seeing what products sold best.
I've been keeping pretty busy for the most part. When I have down time, I enter names & email addresses into an excel sheet so that a database can be formed to send future promotions to the customers in the database. And when I'm not doing data entry, I'm busy keeping track of the fall 2010 product samples that will be used for the upcoming photo shoot to promote the fall line.
This week, I will be working with several other areas in the Nautica offices, like planning & ecommerce. My mentor, MB, is doing a really great job at giving me a well rounded experience during my time in NYC. I know I'm also going to be learning how to use In Design this week so I can work on the holiday style guide. Pretty cool huh?! I think so anyways.
In other news besides tying to be a super star intern, I think NYC is starting to grow on me. I'm not sure if it's all the rush & busy people every where or just that it's not as hard to fit in as I had imagined. But whatever it is, even when I'm ready to go home, I know another part of me will miss being out here on the east coast & in NYC every day for work. I still have a long "to-do"list before I leave though! Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, etc....oh, did I mention Kleinfeld bridal store is literally right down the street from me? Yeah, & for someone like me who loves "Say Yes to the Dress", I think I'll be making a little walk to take some pictures because let's face it...this blog gets boring without pictures!!!!
Where did May go? Seriously, it's already June. I'm having mixed feelings about it all. I feel like it went so fast, but at the same time I feel like this summer is off to a slow start. Ughhhh, my emotions are getting the best of me today. I guess this is my day to miss everyone.
Besides my emotions, my day turned out to be pretty good for the most part. 5am wake up call is getting easier. Same routine, shower, lotion, dry my hair, make up, clothes, & breakfast if I'm feeling extra spicy. Today it was a protein shake. Special K Vanilla is my pick for the next 4 days. I'm not big on breakfast. I'll eat if someone cooks breakfast, but I'm not going out of my way to make pancakes, bacon, eggs, toast, juice, & biscuits & gravy, or b's & g's as my boyfriend would like to call it!
I made it out of the door at 6:30am to catch the 6:54 express train into NYC. As luck would have it, I turned on the wrong road & drove for a few minutes before realizing it wasn't where I needed to be. Oh well, it's my first day on my own so I'm allowed 1 mistake right? Now I had to make sure I was at Hamilton Station in time to park & get my June train pass before the 7:05 express. Look at me! I already know my top 2 choices in express trains into the city! I think I can pull this off for a few weeks.
My timing was perfect. I was sitting on the train, window seat is once again my top pick, when I realized I forgot my umbrella. Great, it was suppose to rain today. That was mistake number 2, but the world wasn't going to end over an umbrella, but I had to laugh at the possibility of getting caught in the rain today with my white shirt on.
The train was on time. I was surprised at how easy I found the walk to 11 W 19th this morning. I walked past FIT again & the church that's now a market. I actually took my camera into the city with me today so I have real pictures & not just ones from my BlackBerry. (So, enjoy the random shots of buildings & taxi cabs & the little church that was turned into a market.) 
I'm the first from the women's team at work as usual. It's about 8:30am. I needed to put the final touches on my trend board for the summer 2011 development. It was cluttered with tears from last week & I needed to make each trend more individual. They were all running together. Chambray, sequins & sparkle, tie dye, vibrant bright summer colors, & knits. Those are my choices in trends. So, after about 15 minutes of rearranging, I have my trend board set up just the way I want it.
It was about 9:05 when everyone else started rolling into work. The assistant buyer is off today moving into her new apartment in Williamsburg. It's just me, the associate buyer, & the senior buyer. We had a touch base meeting at 9:30 to get scheduled for the week & discuss meetings & projects for the next 4 days. My projects for the week include the competitive shopping & trend diary that I will be doing every Monday for as long as I'm at Nautica. Competitive shopping means I get sent out on 5th Ave to take pictures of the store fronts for Old Navy, J. Crew, Banana Republic, & Gap. I also go into the store & take notes on what promotions are being pushed for the week & what other key items & looks are in the stores. When I get back to the office, I put all of my pictures & notes into an Excel sheet so I can track the trends from week to week & see how & if the window displays & store fronts tell the same story as inside each store. I also go to all the retailer's websites & add the women's opening page to my trend diary to compare the story consistency on all levels of retail.
My other projects for the week include the big ideas for spring 2011 board, which I already completed when I first got to the office this morning, so, that's done. On Thursday, MB, my senior buyer & mentor, wants me to start working on the Compass Holiday Style Guide. The Compass is Nautica's look book for each season. Spring, Summer, Fall, Holiday. I'll be dropping CAD images into Adobe Illustrator & adding the style numbers, colors, descriptions. And then Friday, I have intern orientation from 9:15am-Noon uptown. I'm looking forward to Friday. I'll be close to Central Park & that gives me an excuse to explore & take more pictures!
Since, the assistant buyer was out for the day, MB & the associate buyer had to run the other reports for the beginning of the week. I'll be running the Track RW report once my computer gets set up. That report basically shows every department & style for the women's division & reports how well it's selling & all that good stuff. But today, I have to add descriptions to the merchandise samples list since we're receiving fall 2010 samples for the upcoming photo shoot. Updating the merchandise sample list means that the fall samples are starting to come in! I can already tell that this is going to be one of my favorite things to do. When the samples come in, I'm responsible for checking them off, folding, & hanging the clothes.
In the afternoon, we had another meeting to discuss markdowns & what products are going to get the dollar sales up for the next few weeks. I'm still trying to play catch up on all the terms & abbreviations that are used in the women's buying office. Hopefully by next week I will be able to at least follow around even if I don't have much to say about a subject. I will say that I have learned WAY more about the merchandising side of things like numbers & parts of the buying process than I have at SIU. I don't know if it's because I haven't taken the fashion math yet, but this internship at Nautica is really going to give me an edge back at school.
The rest of the afternoon was spent beginning to arrange the top, middle, & bottom door boards for the spring 2011 buy. All of the CADs I printed & cut out last Thursday & Friday are starting to be pinned to the boards so the buying process for spring 2011 can start. I'm looking forward to getting into the details of the buy & I'm really excited about getting to work so closely with the team on everything.
I made the 5:30pm express train back from NYC surprisingly. I had to practically run, but I made it. It's relieving to be headed back. I'm exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before & I could feel my eyelids getting heavy, but I still have about an hour before my train arrives in Hamilton, so I decided to read some more of my book that I picked up while in the Indy. It's called "One Fifth Avenue" by Candace Bushnell, & I forget if you're suppose to italicize or quote book titles, so I'm just going to leave it quoted. Bushnell is the writer of Sex & the City, Lip Stick Jungle, & several others. I forgot how much I love to read. That's another quality my maternal grandma instilled in me.
Thankfully, I made it back to the house in one piece...physically anyways. Like I stated at the beginning of this post, it's an emotional day for me. I miss everyone. I had to call my mom to vent & get it all out so that tomorrow can be a better day. And so June continues.
