As my summer internship come to a close I am sad that I have to leave this wonderful position and department and above all I’m sad I have to begin looking for another internship (in the Philadelphia area) all over again.

I worked within the design group briefly this week helping them organize their CADs of each woman’s apparel item. We need these CADs when it comes time for “fits”. Fit experts make sure that the garments were constructed properly, according to these original designs, which had already been approved by our design team. I organized these CADs into numerical order within the office so they became more easily accessible.

Also, I took on a time-consuming project this week with the accessory department. I went through their entire current product and prepared the old ones for sample sale. These items were then replaced with new product that had yet to be filed onto the jewelry tower. Once I had all the new merchandise together I began to organize it according to the floor layout plan for the summer season. The buyer wants to be able to see this product in the exact way the customers are seeing it. I followed the floor plan as closely as possible and used my visual merchandising skills for the remainder of the project.

On Thursday we had a large meeting where all the district managers came in to see the upcoming season’s product. This involved great preparation on Tuesday and Wednesday. Our Bass workroom displayed the upcoming fall product as well as spring 2010. Within our “mock shop”, we displayed the entire winter product line that will hit stores this coming season. It was wonderful to see the next six months or so of product and get a vision of where Bass, as a brand, is going.

There was additional store calling this week on another issue. Our distribution center was supposed to re-ticket a dress before shipping it to all stores. However, the buyer I work under had a great eye and thought they were shipped too quickly to be re-ticketed and sure enough, she was correct. This is a shame and creates additional work as now the store employees have to take the time out of their day to re-ticket the items themselves. Not to mention the time it takes for marketing to create these tags, ship them to the stores and then have someone call the stores again to ensure that the re-ticketing finally did take place so we are receiving $79 a dress not $74.

Finally, this week I helped with finding and editing additional information in the assortment plan. Each item needs to have their gram weight listed on the sheet and in many cases this information was absent. It is great to be learning additional design aspects of the apparel industry that can be applied to future decision making as a buyer.

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!