Rebecca
Buying Internship
16 Suitcases, Oak Park
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Project #1
Data Entry
My first role in the store is putting new items into our system, run by Lightspeed. This involves obtaining invoices from our vendors via phone call or email, entering specified information into a spreadsheet and importing, creating new product cards. This also touches on the pricing strategies of the store, where each brand has a different markup based on quality. From here, I pull images of the pieces from the vendor’s website, resize, and import into the system before pushing each product to our website, which is powered through our Lightspeed system. Along with this, I am also responsible for ensuring that we have received the correct items in the correct quantities and sizes. If there is an issue with anything, I must contact our vendor to request returns, exchanges, or credits. This role has allowed me to be very familiar with our different brands, create relationships with our brand representatives, and learn more about pricing strategies.
Project #2
File & Information Organization
As the store has a multitude of spreadsheets, images, and other files, Michelle asked me to create a new organizational system for keeping files organized. I proposed a couple of ideas and organizational strategies to her, asking which one was preferred. We worked together to decide the following organizational system:
Vendor --> Season --> PO #
Each PO folder includes the spreadsheet and a folder of images.
In addition to organizing the files, I created a spreadsheet to keep track of incoming purchase orders with a checklist of things that need to be done for each order. This is something that I update daily and is something that Michelle or another team member can look at to know what they can work on.
I also organized our emails in folders by vendor, making it easier to find and keep track of emails. It’s easier for me to move around emails and keep track of what we have and haven’t read or seen and responded to. Another organization task that I’ve taken on in the past two weeks is the creation of a master vendor spreadsheet. On this spreadsheet, I have included each of our brands, vendors, and suppliers along with all of their information. This includes phone numbers with names and extensions, emails, addresses, username and passwords on their site, and where they can be found at tradeshows. This project took lots of time, as I had to call or email almost all of our suppliers, inquiring about passwords and confirming other information. This spreadsheet will make it easier not only for Michelle, but also for the next buying intern and assistant when they are searching for contact information or placing re-orders.
Project #3
Seasonal Inventory Transfer
By now, we have flipped the inventory of the store to fall items. Since late August, we have been receiving fall shipments with sweaters, pants, jackets, and other fall pieces. Slowly, we have been mixing some of these pieces into our summer sales floor and moving summer clothing to our sale section periodically. Today, however, we made the total flip from summer to fall. With the way that the sales floor is set up, we have one large rack of sales items, marked 40% or 50% off. This rack includes two types of items. The first is pieces from the previous season, meaning that during the summer, there will be pieces from the previous summer’s inventory. The other type of item on the rack is pieces from the current season that only have one or two pieces left or they’re not moving. When a new season hits, however, we need to move all summer items into our basement storage and bring up all of our fall and winter inventory. During a given season, we keep extra sale inventory in our back room for easy access to refill the sale rack.
Since the store itself is organized by color, we have always organized our back inventory by color as well. However, our sales rack on the floor is organized by size first. While we were pulling up all of our winter sales items, I suggested that we organize our back stock of sale items by size because it would make it much easier to refill. This entire process, though long and exhausting was really fun because we got to re-organize and merchandise the entire store for the new season.
Project #4
Holiday Inventory & Showcase
Now that Halloween has passed, everyone is looking towards the holiday season. Michelle walked me through how important it is to decorate and market for the holidays early—even before Thanksgiving—because it reminds people that they need to do their holiday shopping. We brought in a lot of exciting gifts this year, including treats, men’s and dog’s gifts. Since all three of these areas are new to the store, we had to go through the process of adding categories into our system and onto our website. This process is quick and very important for product entry purposes. We also wanted to be very consistent, as our holiday gift guide includes links to our website. Because we had somewhat limited space for gifts in the store, Michelle and I picked out new fixtures that we can use to display gifts, candles, and bags.
Along with the gifts we are receiving from our suppliers, we are also receiving the first parts of our holiday collection. 16 Suitcases has been known to be the place to get holiday outfits and dresses. We brought in a lot of very cute, unique, and sparkling sweaters, skirts, and dresses this year. Because we had so much inventory this season, we were not able to put a lot of it out right away and Michelle and I had discussed a way to tell our customer s that we are releasing our holiday pieces. We ended up deciding to hold a showcase event at the store, which I would be in charge of. Instead of holding a traditional show, I thought it would be better to make it an interactive type of show where the models would walk around the store with signs that had the name and brand of the piece they were wearing. During the event, we would have sparkling rose and prosecco along with finger foods for customers as they shopped and tried on things. I contacted and secured five models for the event, who would receive a $50 gift certificate to the store for helping us out. For our customers, we had a raffle prize, which was free for anyone to enter. Included in the prize was a candle, a wristlet, and a necklace and earrings set. Since it was the first event of its kind at 16 Suitcases, I created a checklist that can be applicable to future events of the same nature. A preview of the file is below.
Unfortunately, since it was a little last minute, the necessary marketing was not executed on the part of our marketing intern. Therefore, the event brought in less people and sales than we had hoped for, but in my debrief to the team, Michelle pointed out that we were able to learn a lot about the supplies, level of marketing, types of food, and lists needed for future events. It will pave the way for the success of future events held at the store.
