First Week as an Intern

So it's officially been a full work week as an intern for Ross, and it has by far been one of the best work experiences of my life. I am one of 98 interns for the company's New York Buying Office that employs around 900 people. We just increased the size of the office by 10%; we definitely make a presence!

This definitely isn't the type of internship where you are in charge of bringing coffee; people are bringing it to you! I go to appointments with the buyer and assistant and I am treated like a equal as I sit in on meetings with vendors. As an assistant buyer intern, I have not sat at my desk for more than about 30 minutes at a time. I am paired with a buyer and her assistant for men and children shoes. The best part about working in shoes is the shoe vendor shows and going around the city to go to different showrooms. The office is on the edge of the Garment District (think Project Runway area) so buyers working in the clothing departments are walking distance to their vendors. In the past week I have travelled to Queens as well as up and down the streets of Manhattan in the Flatiron District and Union Square area. FFaNY (Fashion Footwear Association of New York) held a shoe show the latter part this week, so I jumped right into appointments.

MONDAY:

For my first day we spent the first half of the workday in orientation as one big group getting all sorts of information needed from the fabulously Human Resource team. After 4 hours of orientation, our mentors came to pick us up. It literally felt like kindergarten where you sit and wait for your parent to pick you up from school as each person's name is called out. Our mentors took each of the interns out to lunch around the city. My mentor and her assistant treated me to lunch at a Butterfield 8, a local place that takes pride in being the place "where business professional meets the social scene". With that in mind, my pesto chicken sandwich and side salad ran at $16, a little steep of a price, but for that place, the price came from its location.
http://www.butterfield8nyc.com/

After lunch and back in the office, I got settled into my desk. By the way I love the location of my desk because it is in a training room converted into a large intern office. The room houses computer desks for about 12 interns in total and I feel we can really help each other out being together we are all working under buyers and doing around the same type of work. Good move on Ross's part. I spent the afternoon between my desk setting up calendar meetings and shadowing my mentor and her assistant at their desks. Before I knew it the day was over and was off the clock at exactly 5:30.

I met up with my new friend and co-worker, Ashley and made our way back to our apartment in the rain for dinner in the dining hall. With the rain outside, and exhaustion waning our bodies we stayed inside for the rest of the evening.

TUESDAY:

I was excited for my second day of work because I was already going on my first shoe vendor appointment so soon. I have to admit when I was told we were being picked up by car to go out to the showroom in Queens, there was a bit of excitement. How exciting to be an intern getting to ride through the city chauffeured in a Lincoln Towncar that waited for us until we also finished the appointment. This definitely was not your average taxi service. We went to a mens work boot showroom where I learned there were so many options to make a mens work boot different. To the common eye all the boots looked the same, but there were slight details that made each shoe different, from the material of the sole to the height of the actual boot.

After my lunch break, I spent most of the afternoon in a training class with other interns about computer programs. The little time left, I shadowed and learned the basics of some of the reports used. I was surely thankful for the Merchandising Math class I took this past semester because terms used throughout the reports made sense to me.

WEDNESDAY:

The morning was spent in another training class for interns. My teacher for the class was an amazing man who also just happens to be featured on a new show on Bravo, Princesses of Long Island, where his daughter is one of the main characters. I have not gotten a chance to watch it because I never watch TV.

After lunch I got to go the the first day of FFaNY shoe show. After meeting a group of vendors we headed to an appointment at Nina, a company that specializes in womens and girls shoes. The showroom was absolutely adorable as well as their staff, a great group of people. This trip even featured pastries and coffee which is always a plus in my book.

This was the first time I had been exposed to childrens shoe buying. The little girls shoes for Spring 2014 are just precious. Unfortunately I cannot go into detail about what I saw but let's just say little girls are going to have foot candy basically.

Our next appointment was another showroom that makes shoes for licensed characters such as Spiderman, Batman, and Disney. I had never seen Spiderman on so many different shoe styles! There were blue and red canvas shoes, boat shoes, sneakers, flip flops, and clogs, oh my! And for every hot cartoon character around. I met the nicest man there from Texas and we had a moment sharing stories about our home. It highlighted my day, being so far from home and meeting people that know where you are from. We were not too far from work, so we walked it back to the office and called it a day.

THURSDAY:
This is was best shoe show day. I literally spent the entire day at FFaNY. I had never seen so many shoes at one time in my life. I was exposed to thousands of shoes on three floors of convention center space. Even though we went searching for children and mens shoes, the majority of shoes at these shows are womens. The market for womens shoes is extremely vast with tons of options.

Our first official meeting for the day was nearby for Rachels Shoes. They specialize in little girls shoes, especially the really cutesy play sandals that feature little flowers and butterflies with velcro straps, those types of shoes. The room had a few hundred styles of shoes, each shoe being an open toe sandal for young girls.

Afterwards we headed over Vida Group, which is a company houses 15 different shoe brands including Carters and OshKosh for kids, Unionbay and Sag Harbour. We met with Carters and OshKosh. During the meeting a younger gentleman came into the room and sat his chair right next to me. Richard, was the head shoe designer for the two kids brands. I was a little starstruck, even though he was a regular person. He walked us through the story line for the Spring 2014 collection and he was really able to express to us what he was going for with each shoe color and print. It was a great moment being able to listen to him express about his designs. We stopped by Unionbay for a bit and I saw the design team for Kohls, a large group by the way of about 10 people, at work picking, choosing and discussing shoes for their stores. What I found interesting was that they had a model who would try on shoes for them. She would be handed a shoe, try it on, and do a few posses, then again with the next shoe. That was very interesting.

Our last formal appointment was with mens showroom for Giorgio Brutini, GBX, and Bass Shoes. I had noticed throughout the past few days, but it was during this meeting that I realized the shoe business was run by men. Liked stated before this place was no exception. I really appreciated the craftsmanship in shoes at this company that specializes in men dress shoes. Leather is a business they know very well.

We ended the day back at the FFaNY floors where I got to meet 2 shoe buyers from Ross's Buying Office in Los Angeles and our womens shoe buyer. We accompanied them to a few different vendors to see how they did business and saw what they were looking for. Again womens shoes is like a whole new world as far as options. There was just a plethora of shoe styles and colors.

That was a long day and ended the day at the shows.

FRIDAY:

 The tropical storm had began to make its way to the city as it rained the entire day. Today was team building activities for the interns which was more fun than team building sounds. I think at this age we have the idea of not appreciating team building activities because they take us out of our comfort zone, which in fact is the point of these things. I think the rain was what also put a damper on the idea.

Overall though I thought the day was fun, plus getting paid for these types of activities was fine in my book. We were instructed to not go to our desks at all today. Our first challenge was a scavenger hunt around the city. We were broken up into groups of ten and sent out into the cold steady rain. For about 4 hours we made our way as far as 60th St and 3rd and all around getting total strangers to take group photos of us for the hunt. Our team only got 17 points out of 49. We were not too upset about it since the objective of the day was to get to know each other. At one point we made our way into Saks Fifth Ave to dry off for a bit and had major bonding time with browsing. On the way out though a girl and I totally spotted an NBA basketball player with his entourage of 4. Unfortunately neither of us knew who he was or what team he played for. They walked right past us and he totally looked back at us because he knew we recognized him. If only we knew  who he was we could have gotten his picture with us for 5 extra points to our total. Some of the places we checked off our list where: Gershwin Theatre (home of the Broadway Musical Wicked; great show btw), Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller Center, Plaza Hotel (Home Alone), and Tiffany & Co.

We were treated to pizza back at the office and got to dry off for a bit before the afternoon of more team building. We had a team t-shirt contest, and played the name game in groups of about 20. That was a huge challenge since I was the third to last to go! Our final game was 2 truths and a lie and I must say it was during  this game that people obviously forgot that they were in a work environment. Some of the truths told you would have wished were lies! The day was ended overall with a great laugh and a better acquaintance to more interns. Despite the downpouring rain the day was a success.