Destiny Beckons !!!
I stepped out of the lush green IIT Madras campus, each step taking me away from the calm and serene life which I have become so accustomed to in the past one year. Chennai traffic greeted me with the loud hooting and desert heat. It was my first day of Summer Internship at Indian Terrain Fashions and I couldn’t shake off that feeling of nervous excitement we get when new things are about to happen . For a brief moment, my thoughts went back to how it all came to this moment.
A day after classes began I started hearing the word “summers”. Needless to say I was clueless about the whole concept. Nothing surprising in that , because I just take things as they come and relish the last minute struggle. For those who are in the same frequency as me, they will agree “It’s a special joy managers must learn”. Moving forward, within a month the companies started visiting the campus and people started getting placed. I looked at the whole process with an air of curiosity, trying to single out what people were looking for. If only I could decipher that!
The only thing I was certain off was that I wanted a marketing profile and I didn’t care how long it took or how meagre it paid. (Money is wasted on me in any case, for if I earn more, I just end up spending more else it’s simply borrowing, easy
It was a brief interview and he was only looking out for the passion I have for the role he was offering me. Once he was convinced of that, I was through. I was one of the final few who finally had his summers offer, if not the last. So there was no big Eureka moment for me like the initially placed one’s had. But of course, it gave me a new reason for having couple of drinks, “Eureka”!
Back to the present. Corporate life was not new to me, except the fact that it had so far been centred around cubicles and computers, the locus of all Service industry in the present era. I was wondering what the Product industry had to offer . When I stepped into the head office, I was welcomed by the sight of employees carrying dozens of garments to an in-house design department where heated discussions were taking place. Designs were being shown and getting approved or rejected on the spot. I was surprised at the pace these decisions were being made. How could anyone say which garment is going to be liked or not by the customer community just by one look at it. Duh!
My mentor, marketing manager of IT, had a brief chat with me regarding how the organization was set up and how different functions are integrated to work in sync to cater to pan India. When he told me that the entire marketing of the company was run by 2 people I was flabbergasted. What he said next though, was something totally beyond all my figments of imagination
“ I am going to send you to my retail outlets as a Mystery Shopper. Go and find out about the store & window communication, Mixology concept and competitor market.”
He was smiling and after a moment of hesitation, I was too.
Mixology was the new branding strategy they had put on the market. His idea was simple – on one hand I could go out there and find things on my own and at the same time he could find a communication gap if there was any, among what the brand was communicating and what the customers were perceiving, based on my feedback.
So began my visits to shopping malls and exclusive brand outlets spread across the city. The experience was totally different from the usual , when the visits to these malls were meant for shopping, movies and hangouts. Firstly i was alone (times when I wished I had a female trainee assigned with the same work . .
I was caught up in a world of garments like never before. The inside story was quite different, all those clothes & shops which i have passed many times but never cared to observe the intricacies that were laid out to grab and hold attention. From door stickers & shelf arrangement to Mannequins, Salesmen uniforms to Offers & Discounts everything had a purpose – one to Entice ,Engage and Empower the Sale.
After my initial stint of investigating Indian terrain brand , my next task was to do the same with competitor brands understanding what the differences are and the extreme competition that existed in the Premium Men’s Casual Wear segment came to fore. Nothing was spared, no stones were left unturned for this was war and the coveted prize – Customer’s.
My internship passed through phases where I came to understand the recipe that went into designing these garments, how it went from designs to final products, followed by road shows and the marketing that goes into it to carve a niche space in the mind of customers.
All the talk with the salesmen, the middlemen and upper management made me realize how different each one has to be understood and negotiated with. Theories taught inside the four walls in the classroom kept failing and quick feet was the standout factor, which could take you to even ground and from there-on,its upto your creativity for making the next jump. One fact was quite evident –"you got to fall, if you want to learn. Literally, I was learning to hop now."
The Comparative study on the branding communication at retail identified gaps in the knowledge among sales force regarding the products on display, new mixology branding and a complete knowhow of the industry and brand as a whole. A plethora of steps were initiated to reinforce the knowhow among the sales force based on my findings. Further I moved into designing launch strategy for new e-commerce website, which is quite a story of it’s own. Everything got wrapped up with the photo shoot on the last day. And to answer all my classmates who were wondering about the models who turned up for the shoot,
“Guys IT is a premium MENS wear brand, so no luck there
So that’s my Summers story, No chill and Served Neat.
