Business Trip Wrap-Up

Thursday was our last day in Greensboro and there wasn't very much left to do as the RD's spent most of the day re-arranging the floor layout side and putting their final touches on things before the photographer shot the final lay out. Since there wasn't a whole lot to do we spent more of the time working individually on our projects only taking a break to go on another DC offices visit right before lunch. Rusty didn't want to keep us any longer as there wasn't a whole lot there for us to do other than work on our projects so he let us take the rest of the day off and return to Raleigh.

Overall, I had an excellent time on our lab visit. The two things that stuck out most to me from the entire weekend was how close the Polo group was. Everyone was very accepting of us as interns and quickly included us in the jokes and conversation at dinner and in the lab. Rusty and Cynthia told us in the initial interviews as well as on several other occasions how close everyone was but I had no idea that they were this close. The second thing that stood out to me was the first class treatment that we all received on behalf of Rusty and Polo. As this was my first business trip I was not at all expecting the level of hospitality that we were shown the entire weekend. The only reason why the actual work that we did in the lab was not one of the bright portions of the trip was because Catherine and Megan and I had talked the weeks after the first lab week and I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. However, it was still and awesome experience.

Total hours: 70 hours

DC Networking

Today, Wednesday, we did a little bit of work around the lab like organizing some more of the inventory (not a whole lot). But other than that we spent a lot of time meeting some of the DC Staff and some of the other RD's that were in Greensboro for lab this week. First we talked with some of the specialists from RLX. They talked about the line, some of the complications and struggles that they have had as well as sharing some of their secrets to success and different marketing and merchandising techniques. It was interesting to hear about their experiences because RLX is a relatively new line for Ralph Lauren. We also spoke with the leather goods director. This conversation was a little more brief than the discussion with the two ladies from RLX. She discussed how the economy changes have caused them to lower the price point on some of the leather goods such as the belts. After lunch we went down to the offices of the DC and met with Marty, one of the specialist in the operations department. This was really interesting to me because his job was very similar to what I would like to be doing. Unfortunately, he mentioned that they haven't hired anyone anytime soon and weren't planning on it either. Marty gets to travel a lot with his job which really really interests me as this is something that I aspire to do in my life. We finished up the day by spending some time working on our projects until we finished working for the day.

My First Business Trip

Tuesday morning the interns and I arrived in Greensboro, North Carolina for our lab week. This is my first official business trip (although we have called Frisbee tournaments in the past "business trips") thus far in my professional life. Tuesday started out by meeting the other interns, Rusty, and Tony at the lab in the DC. There were several Regional Directors there as well that I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet because I missed the last lab week. Anyway, today at the lab we started by unpacking some of the items for the fall line to be released in August as well as took inventory for everything that was brought up to the lab. We also had the pleasure to sit in on a meeting between all the RD's and Brett Banks in which they discussed different layouts, merchandising schemes, and color combinations to incorporate with the new directives. This portion of the day I found extremely interesting. We finished working at 7 and all went to dinner together. The destination tonight was Lucky 32's. Most of the RD's sat at a table together allowing the interns, Rusty, and Tony to sit together and discuss the happenings of the day. Upon returning to the hotel, I was astonished. I hadn't imagined us staying in a hotel this nice; it truly was an awesome experience that got me excited about beginning my professional career soon.

Big Momma

Big Momma
Big Momma
Big Momma
Big Momma
Big Momma
Big Momma
Petite
Petite
Petite

Today, Thursday, we spent the day in women's wear at Crabtree Mall. This was a very very interesting day for me; I usually am a little slower than the girls to pick up on a lot of the things that we do in the stores because they do a lot of the things we do in class, but now that were in the ladies department I am extremely lost. Women's wear is split into 3 divisions - petite, lauren, and today's women. We started the day in petite and re-arranged some of the fixtures and such there. Most of the product in womens is hung up so there weren't many issues with standards, mostly just work with fixtures and displays.

The Lauren area of Belk was well maintained and we didn't do a whole lot of work in this section aside from doing some work with standards as well as tightening up some of the displays. We also prepared the store for the arrival of the next new line.

In the "Big Momma" also known as Today's Woman, we re-dressed some of the manikins and displays as well as fixed a lot of the standards. Pictures of what we did are shown above. Once again there was another first for me today - using a steamer...I've had lots of firsts with this amazing opportunity in the form of an internship.

Big and Tall

Secondary Concept Table After
Secondary Wall Display After
Primary Wall Display and Primary Concept Table After


BIG AND TALL
Primary Concept Table Before
Circle Table Before

Secondary Concept Table Before

Wednesday the interns and I spent all day in the Big and Tall section on Polo at the Streets at Southpointe Mall. Essentially, we re-arranged most of the store, including the new Grey Line (as far as we knew this is was the only location in Raleigh that was fortunate enough to have this line so far). I've uploaded the before pictures as well as the after pictures so that you can see them. I actually decided earlier that morning that I will be doing my end of internship project on Big and Tall.

Recovery Day

Today was a recovery day at the Men's Store in Crabtree, in essence we were re-arranging/cleaning up from our absence last week. We moved some of the t-shirts to double expose them on the opposite side of the store. We also did some work in the dress shirts area. We re-folded and tidied up some of the shirts that were displayed. We also did some work with the ties and chose some different shirt and tie displays for this section of the store (see pictures). We also did some work on the leather display in the case by the registers. To finish off the day we talked to Tony, he was basically the man in charge with everything that concerned shipments into the store. We also met with Tyree to go over our numbers for the past week...We beat Southpark in few categories. Tomorrow, we head to Southpointe

RIG master

Today we were back at Crabtree preparing for the upcoming "holiday" rush for fathers day. Again, we did a lot of the same things as far as shifting fixtures all over the place but the highlight of the day for me was when I got to prepare my very first rig. My goal when setting it up was to follow the collection, Bohemian Summer, but I wanted to outfit him in something that I would actually wear myself. The best part was that the fun didn't stop there. We also (Megan, Catherine, and I) designed an entire display, which is also displayed. In addition to the large display shown, we also set up a smaller display in the swim wear section but it was far less impressive than the display shown. Overall this was a GREAT day - my favorite so far, hands down.