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.

Supervisor

This week started off with my head supervisor Holly Erickson, creative director of the product development team and technical design. We went over the projects I had been working on for her while she was away in LA. I presented the competitive shopping guide that I revised and organized for easy use and then presented my ideas of how the Standard Fit Guide can be changed to look more organized like White House| Black Markets.

Holly then gave me direction to start the Standard Fit Guide. I will be designing the basic body and then drawing each different type of garment by category onto the basic body. I am really excited to do this project because it is a guide that every department uses and it helps allow each team to develop product that is to the standard lengths and it will be an easy guide to know which style is being talked about.

I then helped Holly go through the sample room and pull garments that fit the Trend Concept for the Summer 2014 collection, and then organized each pull by category that fit that silhouette or print. This sample rack was then presented to the product development team so that each area of PD knew the direction in which the next season was heading and to take inspiration from.

Another project that I will be helping Holly with is creating a map of LA and other areas and highlighting which stores are competitive shopping and describe each type of area so that when the teams travel to pull samples it is clearly addressed where to shop.

Senior of Innovation

I had a touch base with Glyn who is our Senior of innovation for the foundation side of Soma. He gave me a lot of career advice and then talked about his specific department and role.

When it comes to your career it is important to get as much exposure as possible, find your niche, and be able to know each area of the business.

Glyn described how Soma began. A lady by the name of Verna Gibson saw that her target market was being ignored . At the age that she was the body issues were not being addressed by the large lingerie companies such as Victoria's Secret. At first Soma was Soma by Chico's but then that was dropped because the company felt as though only the Chico's customers were catered to. It is now Soma Intimates.

Glyn then told me about the Innovation process (information I will bring back for the Functional Design class). First there is the brainstorming, one always has a frame of where they want to go but you must go outside this process but a lot of times for a company that is too expensive to do. If one deviates too much with a new idea there are risks such as loss of a profit. Glyn explained everyone wants newness but really everything comes from a different idea that was already produced.

While no product is very unique and a company like Soma cannot stray too far from what they already know works and sells as a garment one can change the type of knit/weave, change the type of finish/dye/print, different yarns can be combined to make different fabric, the color may change, the notions can change, and at the end of that process that is how "newness" or uniqueness comes about for a product.

It is important to realize that at the end of the day everyone in this company is a retailer, we get paid if people buy, we may feel as though we are detached from the front line stores but in reality if no one buys then we do not get paid.

After brainstorming is ideation. Ideation is a frame of mind, one must keep looking at things in a new way. An example of this is the people who made the Swiffer. The men sat hours upon hours observing people using a mop, trying to figure out how not to clean using the dirty water, and at the end of trying many fabrics and observing and ideating, the Swiffer came about; they kept looking at ordinary things (the mop) and thought of a new way to modernize the mop.

When it comes to ideation it is important to be passionate, very optimistic, look at the glass half full, take failure as a learning curve and move on from it, and be very curious to the extreme.

Glyn then showed me an innovative bra mold that he has been developing, but I promised that I would not disclose the information to anyone (but the idea is very cool, and extremely modern).

Dress Embroidery

My favorite project I have been assigned thus far is designing embroidery for one of Soma's top selling dresses from last season. In order to do this I researched the competitors to see what smocking and embroidery were trending on the market. Once I pulled from the competitors I then pulled ideas from the trend and concept book that Sarah Cullen created for the Summer 2014 collection. The dress I am working on will be apart of the March & April 2014 collection.

I then took my ideas and drew the dress on Illustrator. From there I started sketching my ideas and placing each idea onto the dress cad. Once I was done I showed Jenny in PD and she liked all of my ideas. I then presented the ideas in the Concept meeting to the head of our department.

To move forward with my ideas I will be working with the vendors from start to finish to get the embroidery I choose to be manufactured for the upcoming season. This is really exciting and it will be a huge learning experience to really get an idea of how each garment is produced.

Projects

Each department has been asked to develop a project for me to do while I am here. My project this past week with Sarah Cullen (Trend & Concept) is to organize all of the Silks that have been used as inspiration by the CAD team. All of the silks are purchased to use as print designs for the upcoming season.

Meetings

The meetings I attended this week were the limited edition trend preview meeting. Sarah for trend and concept went over each specific theme for the Autumn & Winter concepts. The fabrics that Holly sourced in Europe she presented to both the foundations team and the dressy sleep. Each team selected the fabrics that they liked and then those were given to the production and sourcing teams to find out the cost of each.

I attended the 2014 March & April Development review meeting where PD presented their story boards and samples, the merchants identified any call outs that they had for the line plan, and the silhouettes that are being tested were shown.

Chico's FAS presented to Soma the Copyright issues that the company must be aware of.  This meeting was very interesting because she showed examples of certain garments that the company has been sued for in the past and what the cost of this happening is. The meeting also addressed which prints did not have a copyright and which did. There is no set standard for how much you can copy off a garment, but if a company were to sue, the jury (average people) if they think that the garments are virtually the same then that is considered a copyright infringement. The most interesting fact that I heard was that FOREVER 21 sets aside a budget each season due to the fact that majority of their prints and styles are "knock-offs" and tend to be sued each season by big designers.