August 12- August 16

My last week of my internship was extremely busy. I was helping Holly Erickson create new limited edition boards and that took up most of my time during the week.

I did not attend any meetings besides when I re-met with the product development team and Janet to go over the fit and style guide again to make sure they agreed with all of the changes.

We had an internship "graduation" where we had a chance to voice what we liked and didn't like about the internship. We also found out if we got accepted into the Executive Management Training program.

I am really excited to announce that I have been offered a full time position with the product development team of Chico's FAS. I will be moving to Florida officially in February. It is such a huge opportunity and I look forward to starting my career with an amazing company.

August 5-August 9

Projects

This week I completed the Fit Guide and will be presenting it to the PD team and Janet. Any corrections that they suggest I will change and resubmit to them next week.

I also worked with Sarah on trend and concept for the upcoming year 2015. I helped her choose the correct color swatches and then labeled them all and distributed them throughout the Foundations and Apparel teams. We also updated all of the teams color boards, and started to go over what the themes were going to be.


Meetings

This week I attended a touch base with Holly. Holly and Janet really want me to come back once I graduate and work for Soma. I would first have to do the EMT program (Executive management training) and then Holly and Janet are going to pull for me to get placed back with Soma. With the EMT program it is all based on the head count of each company, and how many positions HR has to fill. The best part about the EMT program is that even if there is not a position open for you yet, you are still getting full salary while you are waiting.

I attended an interview event this week, this was to apply for the EMT program. Each intern who wanted to interview had three different interviews, two with the department you are interested in, and one with someone from HR. These interviews were very conversational and I think that I did very well.

There was a Product development meeting this week to go over all of the fabric and print issues. We also looked at new faux fur to add to some of our limited edition collections. Laurie really liked the idea.


Presentations

This week was very busy with final internship presentations. Last week all of the 11 intern groups presented in front of about 30 people, and the top HR people chose the top three groups to present to Dave Dyer (CEO) and Sara Stensrud (VP of HR). My group was one of the top groups, so this week we spent a lot of time watching ourselves present from the first presentation to HR and worked on what needed to be fixed. Knowing that we were going to be presenting to Dave Dyer is a huge accomplishment but also nerve racking.

To help prepare for our presentations, Kelsey and I met with DTC and ecommerce to go over what was do-able in a timely manner for our suggestions for the Soma website. This was very helpful, and the team really liked all of our suggestions. The best part about our project is that every change we suggested to be changed had research to back it up.

Holly and Janet wanted me and one other girl from my group to also present to Laurie Van Brunt. This was done in a very personal setting with a little less than 10 people. This presentation was more informal but Laurie was so impressed, she even emailed us the next day expressing how impressed she was and how great our presentation skills were, and that she loved our ideas for the Soma website.

July 29- August 2

Projects

This week I continued to make changes to the Limited Edition concept boards. I started designing the new Holiday boards and was conversing with the vendors to make changes on the limited edition fabric we have chosen. The concept boards were also presented to the VP's of the foundations side as well as the lounge and sleepwear side. Callout's were made by the foundations team to see if the scale of our embroidery could be reduced because the scale as of now would not work well on panties.

I have also been communicating for the past couple weeks with vendors on styles that have been dropped before they have even gone through production. I requested to do this as part of my project for back at school, and my team thought that it was a great way for me to really get a hands on experience of how the Product development process works. I now have had these samples made and they are for the January and February corsets. The vendors do not know that these samples will not be used but for my learning only I have had these samples produced with my own minor tweaks on print, trim, color and notion choices.

Presentation

This week all of the intern groups presented their SWOT analysis projects. My group came up with enhancing the direct to consumer experience through improving the Soma website. Many of the changes we made were aesthetic but also navigational improvements.

During the week we did a few mock presentations for different people in Soma. Each mock presentation we were given feedback. Our final presentation was in front of about 30 people and were people from all of Chico's FAS brands and positions. The main judges of our presentations were three recruiters from HR.

The recruiters then had to choose 3 of the 10 groups to present to Chico's FAS president, David Dyer. To my excitement my group was chosen as one of the best groups!
So the upcoming week will be a lot of preparation and feedback from others who saw our presentation to make it the best it can be to present to David Dyer and other executives.

Meetings

I attended one of the " Most Amazing Places to Work" Lunch and Learn activities. The e-commerce teams came in and presented all of the information about Soma's social media outlets. All facts were presented and ways of improving each network was discussed. The presentation was very interesting and many exciting facts were shared.

MAPS meeting I attended and all of the cross function teams came to discuss any issues that were going on and what can be done to fix these issues.

I also attended the Lounge and Sleepwear PI Debrief. This was held by HR and each employee was given their results from their PI debrief. We learned what type of person each employee was and what we can do as a team to best support their needs. It was crazy to see how much everyone's PI's were like them. This was a great way to really get to know your teams. I found it really interesting that the cross functional teams were very similar by position and their type of PI.

This week I was asked to interview for the Executive Management Trainee Program which is for current college graduates. The HR team set up time with us to go over what the interview process will be like and to answer any questions about the EMT program that we may have. I am really excited to interview for this.

July 22- July 26

Meetings

To start off the week I had a touch base with Janet, VP of Merchandising & Product development. She gave me the meetings she wanted me to attend with her this week and projects she has for me to do. Since Janet is very busy, in many cases I will be attending things for her such as the lunch and learn and then letting her know any information or news that is important

I had my P.I. debrief, which is meeting with HR to talk about my results from the personality test I took when I applied. She went over what everything meant and then gave me the results and summary to keep for the future.

I met with Sara Stensrud, VP of HR, at a roundtable meet and greet. She talked about how she got to where she is now, and all of the interns she did that she didn’t like, and ultimately ended up in HR. She said it took her 20 years to figure out what exactly she wanted to do when she “grew up”. She was very personable and was eager to get to know all of us that attended.

I attended two meetings to present the concept boards I created. I took feedback from all that attended and tweaked the garments to what the foundations team decided on doing for their sketches. This was a really great learning experience and I was really happy how everyone responded to the boards.

The Holiday Mailer Meeting was a very interesting meeting, this was to go over the Holiday Mailer. The marketing team presented their sketched spreads and then presented the product that will be shown. Laurie Van Brunt (Soma President) made corrections and changes to what she would like to see on each spread.

The Stellar Sellers Meeting was the largest meeting I have attended yet. The entire company of Soma was in this meeting. The merchants of each category talked about the sales and why certain product did not sell and why they thought others were better, and what they are going to do for next year differently. Laurie lead the meeting and asked questions and made comments about what she has seen with sales and what needs to be different.

Projects

This week the majority of my time was spent creating concept boards for the Limited Edition lines for August, September, October, November and December months. I had to take images from our trend and concept director and decide which inspirational photos really captured the theme and concept we were trying to convey. I did not have much direction so I just created boards that were not too over the top but that definitely were intriguing to the viewer. These boards are a new way to show Laurie Van Brunt the direction in which the limited edition collections are going, and to visually show her what the garments will look like without having the samples. I sketched the fabrics and then also sketched the garments to match the artsy models on the boards. This has been my favorite project.

Also this week I researched what is going on in Social media and created an outline to give to Janet so that she could inform others in new directions Soma can go in Social media.

Next week is our Intern SWOT analysis presentation, so a lot of time this week has been spent preparing our presentation. I am in charge of all of the Photoshop parts of our project which is updating the Soma website to what we think the new changes should be, based on research. I enjoyed being in charge of the creative side of the project as well as leading the direction in which our team wants to go with the research. I was able to use my knowledge from the courses I have taken in the APDMT program and to explain to my team the importance of having facts to back up the changes you would like to make.

Corset Walk Through

This week I went to one of the corset walk through at a local mall. The corset is run by the marketing team and they present to all of the teams at Soma what the “September” corset will look like. They completely remove the entire product currently in the store and replace the product with samples that each team has received for September. Laurie then goes through and makes comments about what she likes and doesn’t like. The highlight of the corset was that every team was able to see the new panty riser tables that have been purchased so that the customer can easily shop the panty tables. This new table holds double of what the risers could before and for the most part all of the product carried will be able to fit in every size on the new risers.

Vendor Meeting

Soma is a very small company employee wise, so every position has a lot of hats to manage. This being said I sometimes take the place of some of the PD team and go into meetings without them. I attended a vendor meeting where the vendor presented all of the new lace and trims to me and the foundation team. We then went through and marked the fabrics we liked and then took all of those samples to the limited edition meetings to present to the rest of our teams. What I love about Soma is that they allow me as an intern to have an opinion, and that they trust my taste to attend these meetings alone.  

July 15- July 19

Touch base

This week I met with one of our associate merchants, Carrie. She went over what her tasks are on a weekly basis. She goes through each full price item and adds the information that the planners send to her on Monday morning of the week’s prior sales. She makes sure that all formulas are correct and are pulling from the right excel sheet. She then goes through and marks down items still left from the month of May and then highlights any product that is meeting the APS (Average unit per store & Average unit per store plan). She enters the sell through percentage for each garment and then also what the life to date sell through is since the garment hit the store floors. Once all of these excel sheets are done the information is then sent to Janet our VP who will then present the information to other executives.

Color Matching Project

This week I had to help Sarah, the senior manager of trend and color, with a color standard ordering process. Sarah has gone through her research and found which colors she likes for the Fall and Winter 2014 collection. I then had to go to the color studio and look through Pantone standards and CSI standards finding the best match possible. Once I was done finding the correct color standard for each color trend, I then had to type an order form to send to our purchasing team to make sure that we receive a color standard of each color choice that I had chosen. Each color standard costs about $7-$15, depending on which ever company we chose the standard from.

Sketching Project

Since my team has seen that I am proficient in Adobe suite, they have given me extra projects. My newest project is taking the laces/trims that were selected for Fall and Winter 2014 and drawing them in Illustrator. These sketches will then be used to add to silhouettes that the PD team chooses for the season. Most of Soma’s teams are very visual so it is important to show the best representation of each garment before the samples are received to get the concept across.

Since my supervisor liked the sketches that I have done, I now am in charge of making concept boards for August, September, October & November limited edition lines. These will be used to better portray to Soma’s President Laurie Van Brunt, what we want for these limited edition lines. The concept boards will be of a woman wearing the silhouettes chosen with the correct laces/trims, along with a picture that best captures that month’s trend.

SWOT Analysis Project

As an intern we have a group project, our team is working on revamping the Soma website because it is not very easy to navigate or to see all the product that one may want to search for. This is a problem due to the fact that the target customer of Soma is not Tech-savvy as it is and so the website itself should be simplified. I am in charge of taking everyone’s changes and recreating the site on Adobe Photoshop. I also have put myself in charge of making sure that any change that is made has some scholarly research done to support this change. We will be presenting our project in front of executives throughout Chico’s FAS.

Meetings

Some meetings I attended this week were a vendor meeting with one of our biggest manufacturers, a line turnover meeting, a meeting with a vendor who supplies embroidery fabric to the Apparel and foundations of Soma, and a CAD approval meeting.

The vendor meeting was for us to see all of the bralettes out on the market and for the lounge team to see all the options that they have for their bralette in the upcoming seasons.

The line turnover meeting was a chance for the executives of Soma to see what will be sold for March and April 2014. Each category presents their line boards and the prints were presented. Laurie made comments about what changes she would like to see in prints and silhouettes.

The meeting with the Embroidery manufacturer was really neat to see. The company is based in Romania and China. The company presented us with their newest embroidery and Aimee and I chose the embroidery that we liked best for the limited edition sleepwear line. The company then takes our choices and scans the barcode on the embroidery, which is a way to “check-out” the embroidery.

The CAD approval meeting was for the majority of Soma apparel and foundation teams. The CAD prints for May, June and July were presented and it was mainly to see if the colors chosen are unique enough and if one color is not presented too many times.

Classroom Work

This week HR had a classroom lecture  on networking and resume building, this has been my favorite classroom meeting so far, and I feel it was very beneficial to my learning. HR went over how they select candidates and the process that they go through. We did a few activities looking at resumes that HR has received and we made changes to make them each better.

July 8- July 12

Shadowing the Vice President

This past week I got to shadow the Vice President of Merchandising and Product Development of Soma, Janet. Janet was the one who came to me and asked me to do so and I feel very privileged to have done so.

First Janet walked me through was she does in the morning and then I attended a couple meetings with her and executives of the company.

I later attended the cross functional team meetings, where each team discusses issues or pros that they have found in the past week.

Janet has asked me to do a weekly report on the Baazarvoice, which is just going over the customer’s reviews and developing a report of trends that have been voiced.

Intern Program

Since I am involved in the Intern program at Chico’s FAS, we have a group[ project with five interns, which is a SWOT Analysis. Our team has decided to revamp Soma Intimates’ website because there are a lot of things that are lacking. During the week I put together a PowerPoint to help my team to understand the direction in which we need to go to present the information.

We have been assigned a team leader of someone in the Chico’s FAS company to help us along the way, during the week we had a meeting to discuss our project and to add any ideas that she saw fit.

Projects

This week I continued to redo the Soma Fit Guide to look more like White House| Black Markets. I also worked on updating the Master sample guide with Dija on the technical design team, and updated any information that the vendors sent about the new fabrics we sourced for the limited edition fabrics for August-November.

Meetings

I attended several meetings this week including the design review, mini stellar sellers and print approval.

The design review was a chance for Product development to present their upcoming lines for May, June and July. This is where Janet (VP) and the merchants have a chance to see the ideas and to make any comments that they see necessary.

The Mini Stellar Sellers is a meeting where all of the garments in stores for May and June are presented. The merchants go through each garment and explain what worked, what didn’t work, and how they will improve for the next seasons to come.

The print approval meeting was for Lounge and Dresses. The Product development teams for these presented the prints that they chose for the May, June and July seasons to the CAD, Trend and Color, and Product development teams. Each team voiced their opinions of what they liked and didn’t like and made changes based on what the Merchants line plans called for. This meeting took a long time to complete because May and June’s prints did not really portray the themes that Sarah (Trend and Color) researched for the concepts of these months.

EMT

At Chico’s FAS they have a program called Emerging Management Trainees. This is what just recent graduates do before they start their career at Chico’s FAS. Soma Apparel is receiving a new EMT merchant and Janet had me be the person to show her around and introduce her to everyone.  It was a chance for myself to look back and see what I really have learned being here for 6 weeks.

July 1st- July 5th

Projects

This week I mainly worked on projects that have been given to me throughout my internship. Majority of the company was off due to the holiday and this is when personal time off is used each year.

One of the projects I continued to work on is for the technical design team and this is updating their spec sheets and Web PDM database. I was given a list of silhouettes to sketch and then I had to add the specific measurements and the unique specifications for each garment using Adobe illustrator. Once I finished all of that I then took the black and white sketch and created an excel spreadsheet to use as a master guide. This master guide will have all of the garment’s descriptions, sketch, measurements, and vendor information. This master guide will be used for the TD, PD & Planning teams ease of knowing which garment is which.

Once I completed all I could in that project I then started on a project given by the Senior Executive for the Creative design & PD team, Holly Erickson. This project consists of communicating with the vendors. In the past week we had a meeting choosing which trims and laces would fit the theme for the March/April collections. Holly presented which ones she liked best and then foundations and dressy sleep collaborated to come up with the best trim.

My job was then to scan each trim/lace into the computer and then email the pictures along with questions about the actual trim so that I could update our excel sheet to communicate with all the teams the cost and information. I also asked the vendors for additional color ways and fabrics that would go along with our upcoming themes. The vendors seem to be very quick with their responses and sourced additional fabrics very quickly.

My other project given to me by Holly was to update the competitive shopping guide. I first researched all the companies I was given and wrote down which categories that specific company fit (active, dressy sleep, casual sleep, etc.). Once I got all the information needed, I then created a clickable excel sheet that can be filtered and searched by whatever means the person searching needs. I had over 300 companies with data researched in this sheet. This was very time consuming, but in the end it turned out very presentable and professional, much better than before.  

Fittings

I attended fit sessions during this week. There was a problem with the vendor. The vendor was not doing all of the corrections that TD sent to them from the first fit session so then the sourcing team sent out an email telling the vendor that this is no longer acceptable and that the garment sample sent will no longer be fit unless the sample meets all the requested changes.

VP Touch Base

I then had a touch base with Janet Jack who is the VP of Product Development and Merchandising. She went over her tasks and the direction in which she took to get to the position she is in now. Janet is the one who came up with the idea of not having a position for a designer. She believes that the practices are best using the product development as the designer as well, since the silhouettes do not change much. She believes that it is best to have one president who sees everything “one eye” this way the same goal is achieved.  Janet would like me to shadow her with all of the executives in the upcoming week.