Wednesday

Yeah hump day again! This morning Britt "manufacturing/design assistant" and I worked in the design room which is at the same location as the showroom. The design room and showroom are at a different location separate from the offices and the Bondi store. Since Britt will be joining Camilla on her overseas trip in India I helped her pack all the sample pieces that she is taking to India. This is the India trip that I helped in organizing weeks prior. The majority of the Camilla garments are manufactured in India, so Britt needs to take all the sample pieces with her for the new first ever winter collection. Typically Camilla has only done resort, holiday, & Summer 1,2,3. So this new collection that they will be monitoring the production on in India will be the first winter collection. I also worked on cross referencing design images for the cut, print, and embellishment references that will be used for the new collection. The design images and the sample garments is what Britt will be using to show the manufacturers in India as examples of what she wants for the winter collection. After packing all the garments that needed to be taken with Britt we realized that the suitcase was 21 kilograms over the weight limit. So then I had to unpack half of the suitcase and ship the remainder in a box through Harrison Logistics. Harrison is the freighting company that Deva and I had met with a few weeks prior for better international shipping. Just like yesterday I had to compile an invoice for the sample garments for customs use only to include with the shipment. After the box was shipped off to India I worked with Britt in making changes to the India schedule that we had made weeks ago. The specific changes that we made to the trip should make it run smoothly.

Tuesday

The day started off with compiling invoices for customs use only. The invoices were for sample pieces that our agents in London had and were being sent back to us. Since the pieces are just sample pieces and not garments that we are going to sell we record them as $5.00 instead of $150.00. This is done on shipments of sample garments for customs. Sample garments are not as important as shipments of actual garments that are going to actual retailers. After that Deva “international sales” and I went through an order from Alteena a spa that sells Camilla garments on consignment. We were double checking to see if their records matched ours as far as how many garments they had of ours, how much they had sold, and how much they still have not sold. Deva and I had to go over DDP and DDU for all our international invoices and shipments that we worked on today.

At the end of the day I worked on the press folders again. I added the most recent press to the folder. The press folder is used as a marketing tool for the buyers who are unfamiliar with the Camilla brand. The buyers can then see how popular the brand is and the amount of famous people who wear it.

Monday June 28 another week at Camilla's. Today some how just flew by first it was 11am then it was 4pm in no time. This morning I attended a meeting with Deva "International Sales" with Mickey Muae ( not to sure on how to spell her last name) . Mickey is a native Australian who lives in L.A. and is Gerard Butler's personal assistant. She happens to be a huge Camilla fan and wears kaftans around celebs in L.A. She wants to help Camilla target more celebs in the U.S. Since Mickey happens to have connections and has worked with several U.S. celebs in the past she thinks that she has some ideas on how to get Camilla in the U.S. celebrity market. She had a list of celebs that would be interested in the Camilla style and their contact information. She even had Oprah's contact info. I was impressed!:) AFter the meeting with Mickey I organized folders of three different collection look book shoots. I organized Soleil, Gelato, and Babylon. Again Babylon is the latest and was on the runway in the beginning of May and is available to view online, but won't be in stores until August. Gelato is old here, but hasn't even gotten to the U.S. yet. For each look book shoot folder there is the photographers information that was used for the shoot, the run sheet, quotes/invoices, models info., inspirations (hair, makeup, & poses), and the overall debrief on how the shoot went and what could have been different. Having all this information organized and handy will making it easier for putting together the next look book shoot.

TGIF!!!!! Today I arranged the garments on the store floor by color, so a little touch in visual merchandising today. Then I attended a meeting for channel 9 with Sarah who is in charge of marketing and PR. The meeting was for channel 9 doing a week of filming in the office for a reality show. The show will be about an Australian who is applying to be Camilla's P.A. So in July there will be filming done in our office for a week. Not sure how I feel about that. After the meeting I spent the rest of the day working on my SWOT analysis of the Camilla brand. I was collecting data from all three Camilla stores, national sales, and international sales to find the % increase in net sales over the past few years. I was researching other SWOT analyzes that were done in the past to help me get an idea on how I am going to set up my analysis for the Camilla brand. So for the most part I just worked on research for the SWOT analysis that I am conducting for Camilla.

This morning I hung all the one off pieces on racks with the Camilla hangers in order by their stories. I used the the look book to help me organize them into the stories. The task of putting them in order took a long time because there were about 100 or so garments that had to be organized and put on hangers. The reason they needed to be on display today was because we had the famous Christine Anu come in to pick one off pieces for her wedding. Christine is a famous Australian pop singer/actress. She was in RENT, Moulin Rouge, The Matrix Reloaded, and Judge of Australian Idol. What Christine really wanted was Camilla to design a dress specifically for her, but to source and assemble for just one garment instead of several garments of the same type would be very pricey, more than $10,000. So what Britt and I did was show Christine all the pieces and had Hannah model some of them. From there Christine chose some pieces and decided that she wanted them altered in a certain way to put her own twist on them. So, overall Christine chose garments for her bridesmaids and herself since they are all one size. Britt and I took down notes as far as all the changes that she wanted and will have them changed to Christine's liking. The meeting lasted 3 hours, which was a big chunk of my day. Then after Christine left I went with Deva "International Sales" to show garments to Shawni a lady who sells on her own at trunkshows or to boutiques in Lebanon. Shawni went through the garments that we had in stock and chose what she liked. Then Deva and I went through and put all the ones that Shawni chose and tried to organize them by color to give Shawni a better idea of what she picked. Since Shawni will be taking all these pieces together and displaying them on a rack at trunk shows there should be some kind of theme throughout her rack. We organized them by color and style to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Shawni ended up purchasing 80 garments. So it was a good day for Deva and I.

Finally, I wrapped up the spreadsheet of 500 hotel/resorts for the hotel folder. The folder that I have been working on along with the potential stores/boutiques the past few days. Tomorrow I hope to finish up the store folder. While Camilla was in L.A. she was approached by Rachel Zoe. Rachel commented on how she loved Camilla's work. So Camilla called us and asked us to send some things to Rachel. So I sent a letter, 2 scarves, and our latest look book that features the "Babylon" collection. Babylon was in this past fashion week May 3-7 and is featured on the Camilla website, but won't be hitting the stores until August. Then I went up to our showroom to get some "one offs" to bring to the store for the one off sale that is held for the crazy VIP camilla fans. One offs are pieces that were pulled from the collection that were never put on the runway. They are one of a kind that will never be made again and that no one else can buy, similar to couture. The VIP customers think of it as artwork. The one off pieces are also 25% more money than the normal kaftans that are sold at the store every day. I brought about $60,000 worth of one offs from the showroom to the store today.

Starting out today I continued to work on the research for the potential stores and hotel resorts like I have been doing for the past three days. It is an ongoing project that will be continued on even after I am done working on it. I will be rapping it up for the most part tomorrow. I won't have all of it done, but after three to four days of research on potential sites to sell the Camilla product it's time to get some experience in a different area. Today I also attended a meeting with the manufacturing assistant "Britt" on importing and exporting our products through a Harrison Logistics. Harrison Logistics is an international freighting company. Then after the meeting I worked a little bit with Hannah the retail stylist. We worked on putting a style guide together for the Kaftans. Hannah is also a model, so we had digital pictures of Hannah wearing the Kaftans that we added descriptive styling notes to for the styling guide. The styling guide will be used to market to the customer. The guide had Hannah wearing several different Kaftans in a variety of different colors, prints, and cuts. For each Kaftan we described about six different ways to wear it or style it for different occasions. For an example we would say, "This blue navi tie string kaftan can be worn on any casual summer day or converted into a cap sleeve dress that would be perfect to wear when attending a summer wedding."

Monday the start of week 5. Today I worked with Deva in international sales. I went through a very unorganized folder of potential boutiques, resorts, hotels and some marketing and PR. Today, I began the huge task of making a spreadsheet of potential boutiques and hotels. There wasn't a whole lot of information on the boutiques and hotels. It could be as little as a website or a name of a boutique or hotel. So I spent hours researching the hotels and boutiques, then recording all their data. I was looking for the name, country of location, phone number, e-mail, and address for each hotel and boutique. Not sure exactly how long it will take me to compile the spreadsheet. Once, I get all the information compiled I will be contacting all the boutiques to see if they would be interested in carrying or product by e-mail or phone call along with a follow up call. The information on the hotels will be kept for future travels for Camilla. Although some of the resorts would be good locations to stock our resort wear. So they can be used for potential stores and hotel information.

Friday, June 18th

So totally frustrating once again......I haven't had internet since thursday night. So here is another late post from Friday's work day. Friday I continued to do more research for Camilla's overseas trip. Instead of looking for potential stores or boutiques in NYC I was looking for places in Stockholm. It was very time consuming and complicated since most of the websites were in a different language. I didn't even know where to go on the websites for women's wear, let alone dresses or swimwear to see the styles and prices. It was surprising that a lot of the websites didn't offer an option to view the site in English. On the side I also looked up nice restaurants for Camilla to go to in Stockholm. So Friday was again another long day of research.

Today it was very cold and rainy, and work was pretty slow. Slow at Camilla's is surprising. Since a few people weren't at work because of the flu, Camilla is overseas, and the dreary weather it was pretty calm in the office. I organized a little bit of the marketing folders, and re tagged some scarves and shipped them to Camilla in the states in the morning. Then the remainder of the day I continued to do the same research as the day before. I specifically looked in the New York area for boutiques that could sell the Camilla label today. Since, Camilla will be in New York this weekend she can actually go to the boutiques that I find, and determine if she wants her product to be sold there or if the boutiques would let her sell there.

YEAH hump day!!! Even though it is a short week, because there was no work on Monday I am glad to know that the week is half over. This morning I was able to learn the different ways the kaftans can be styled. Amazingly I found out that about each style of the kaftan can be worn about 6 different ways making it look completely different each time. The 6 ways of styling the kaftan is a huge selling point. Since the average Kaftan is around$500-$600 knowing that it can be worn 6 ways (6 outfits in 1) gets the customer almost every time. After about an hour and a half of a styling session I spent the remainder of my day doing research. I was looking for potential areas to market in the U.S. for Camilla. I was looking for cities with good income levels and warm climates where the kaftans could be worn. Camilla does have a few boutiques that are in the U.S. that her kaftans are sold in, but she is looking to expand. Once I found good areas with high incomes and warm weather. Then I looked to see what stores would possibly consider selling the Camilla label. I worked off a list from modemonline.com. It had a list of boutiques that are in the United States. I would check out their websites to see if they represent the label or to see if the Camilla product would have a chance at selling it that particular store. I compiled a document of about 23 possible stores Camilla can try to get her products into. I had the store name, the city that it was located in, the store address, the website, and the phone number in the document that I put together. Checking out all the stores websites from the modemonline website was time consuming. It took my entire day to find 23 stores, that we might be able to put the unique Camilla brand in.

Tuesday, the start of week 4! Today I helped Deva, she handles international sales. I helped her get together essential things to ship to Camilla overseas. Camilla left this morning for her 3week trip. We got together press banners, look books, press kits, swing tags, garment bags, Camilla hangers, etc.. We had to pack several boxes with all of these things in it to ship to the different locations that Camilla will be stopping on here journey. Camilla already will have the latest collection with her "Babylon" that she will be show casing to her potential clients. During the trip Camilla will not only be promoting her product, but will also be checking out new places for manufacturing. After all the boxes were packed with the right amount of all the items, I put together some marketing folders, and press kits. After doing that for awhile I went back to work with Britt in Manufacturing/Product Development. Since the Camilla label "is a label that doesn't discriminate" the garments are made for all shapes and sizes all personalities and walks of life to make women look and feel beautiful. I was able to be a test model for Britt today with the sample garments that she received. She was checking to see where the garments were hitting or falling on me. As far as how long the garments were, where the neckline was falling, sleeve length, etc. After being a test model I did yet again another comparison document to send to manufacturers. I took several digital images of embroidery from two different manufacturers of the same garment and did a compare and contrast of the things that we like and don't like. This way the manufacturers can try redo the garments to get it closer to what we want. From there which ever manufacturer gets it to the closest to what we want we will go with.

Great way to start off a new week!!! No work today, a public holiday the Queens Birthday!!!!

Friday June 11th

Yeah.....I am finally caught up on my blogs for this week. So, Friday was a great day at work a lot was accomplished. I went to Camilla's mansion where she has her house, show room, and design room. (Her place was amazing!!!) From early morning till afternoon Britt, Camilla, and I went through the pieces for the next collection. We looked at previous silhouettes and put together fabric, color, and embellishment changes that Camilla wants for the up and coming collection. Britt and I were frantically writing as fast as we could trying to keep up with Camilla, because she talks so fast and has such a limited amount of time that she can work with us one on one. We had to write down the code of the silhouette, code of the color, and codes for fabric and embellishments per garment. After working in the design room I helped Bec in the show room. Bec does all the national sales for Camilla. I helped her write down what pieces were bought from her last showing and bagged the garments and booked a mail courier to take it to HUSH. HUSH is the company that purchased all the pieces that I was bagging. After working at Camilla's house we all went back to work in the office the rest of the day. I was helping Britt track sample shipments that didn't arrive. It was frantic in the office. Camilla leaves for her trip on Tuesday, Monday is a public holiday here so no mail and it was Friday afternoon and we had missing shipments that Camilla needed to take with her. One of the largest shipments was idle in Singapore. We were waiting for it to reach the Sydney airport and then we had to organize someone to run up to the airport Friday night whenever it reached the airport.

Thursday June 10th

This is for Thursday's work day. Again, I don't know what is going on with the internet it went out while I was posting Wednesday's post. So annoying....... Anyways, Thursday I rewrote the disclaimer tag that goes on the kaftans. In hopes to reduce our returns. People will wash them certain ways that damage the garment and then want refunds or exchanges. So, I worked with the design assistant to come up with a detailed disclaimer tag. Then I received some more prints from a company called print studio and unit 2 designs. I printed them out, put them in the inspirational prints folder, coded them, and burned them to cd in tiff. layers format for Camilla to take with her to other manufacturers on her trip. Again Britt the design assistant and I worked on putting together a detailed agenda for Camilla's trip after Camilla's revisions. I think this was take 3 of changing the itinerary for India. However, in order for Camilla to get the most out of this $78,000 trip she needs to have a precise agenda of where she is going and what she needs to discuss.

Wednesday, June 9th

So finally I am able to connect to the internet where I live it has been a frustrating couple of days without internet. I am really dependent on having internet here. One to keep up with my blog and two for communication back home through skype. This blog will be about my work day on Wednesday. Today we received 30 sample garments form a manufacturer called Bakson in India. I checked them in with the invoice and then checked them for quality with the design assistant, and to see if they were changed to our terms that we sent them last week. Unfortunately they weren't exactly what we wanted. Therefore, I had to take more pictures of what we wanted and what they had sent us to reiterate what we want them to produce. I also received several sunglass images that needed to be recorded by codes and put into the accessory folder for potential manufacturers for accessories. To get ready for Camilla to go overseas with samples Britt the design assistant and I had to sew 100 labels on to sample garments for Camilla to take with. Needless to say that took the whole afternoon.

I started off today by researching high heels. Camilla is leaving a week from today for a trip around the world to visit all the different manufacturers. She will be checking on garments that are already in production, and also seeking out new manufacturers for better prices. Also, she will be looking at manufacturers that she has never worked with, because she wants to start selling more lifestyle items that she has never sold before. The reason I was researching high heels today is because Camilla wants to work with a manufacturer that can make a more durable high heel than the ones that she has sold in the past. Therefore, I was looking at material details and construction of a high heel. After the research I worked with the production assistant with compiling a folder that has inspirational images in it for Camilla. The folder will be for her to take with her to India. She can use it to ask her manufacturers if the items, prints, and materials would be do-able to go ahead with production. I also put together a schedule of what days and times she will be meeting with each manufacturer. She is meeting several throughout her trip so I only compiled her schedule for India. Along with that I put together a contact list of all the manufacturers in India. It consisted of the company name, the contact person and their position title, address, phone numbers, e-mails, skype ID's, etc.

Monday, the start of week 3 already! Today I just checked a few e-mails, ran to the post office to ship back some samples to a manufacturer that we are currently using. Then attended another team meeting in Sydney. The meeting went from 11:30am-4:30pm. It consumed most of my day to say the least. In the meeting today we discussed in more detail personnel, administration, marketing (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), Retail, Wholesale (National), International Distribution, Business Development, Manufacturing, Product Development, and Finance. Again, to give you an example of how in depth we went I will go over what we talked about for business development and product development. For business development we want to look at how we want to be represented in the markets that we want to be in, we do have one distributor on each continent and some cruise liners, we need to have budgets and targets and actually meet them, close the deals that Camilla initiates, and bar-coding. As for product development we considered all options for lifestyle products and decide which to introduce when-the evolving of the brand, reviewed our product development including what worked and why and to use those learnings in going forward, effectively market researched trends and products based on Camilla's inspiration ( continually ongoing), and the need to keep to our budget for research and development expenses.

More of the office. This is where Sarah works and she does all the marketing.
Deva, she handles all international sales.
Brit, she is Camilla's production assistant. I am currently working with her the most.

This is Bec, she handles national sales.

Me working on the never-ending press folders. They continually need to be updated, because Camilla or a Camilla garment is in some type of press weekly. P.S. don't pay any attention to the date and time on the actual picture it is totally wrong.:)

This is a late post for Friday June 4th. The entire day on Friday the whole Camilla team attended a conference meeting in downtown, Sydney! We worked on putting together an action plan for the company. As far as where we want to be in the next few months and as far into the future as five years. We talked about manufacturing, delivery schedules, national/international client relationships, staffing, point of sales, inventory, procedures and folders, marketing, public relations, and budgets. We discussed each section in great detail. I won't explain each section that we talked about, but to give you an example of the depth we went into I will tell you about manufacturing. For manufacturing we talked about our communication with manufacturers, consolidating manufacturers, the procedures for receiving sample invoices, creating budgets for sampling, looking at potential manufacturers in the areas of: sunglasses, shoes, swimwear, undergarments, and jewelry. Then production with existing manufacturers, timelines for sample production, managing production delivery schedule, consolidating production for stores & collections, pricing and coding, and bulk order production. Needless to say I had a long meeting on Friday that I attended. Everything that I discussed was only for manufacturing which was only 1 of the 10 topics that we talked about in detail.

Today I did another comparison document of 2 samples from manufacturers. I updated our contact details for both our summer and winter manufacturers. Then I worked on downloading several prints through circle line. Once, I received all the prints that were invoiced for us to receive I coded them with their correct codes. The codes make it easier when it comes time to order a product in a certain print. This way Camilla and her design assistant can say what garment they want with what print by recording the proper codes for the manufacturers. The remainder of the day we had a promotional event with AUDI.

Wednesday, of week 2. Today was interesting! For once it started out calm and not crazy busy. In the morning I researched all our manufacturers that we are using, as far as getting all their most updated contact information that we might need. Then I took an invoice from one of our boutiques and burned a cd for the owner of all the images of the products that she ordered along with their product codes, fabric content, and style description. That took awhile seeing how all the images in the data base are not labeled, so I had to find the image then find it in the look book for its product code that matched the invoice. After that I took pictures of our latest samples that we received from our manufacturers and put them on the server to be reviewed by Camilla and her design assistant Brittany. I also did a compare and contrast document of digital images from 2 manufacturers. We decided to go with one of the 2, but liked some things from the one we didn't choose. Therefore, I put together a document that had arrows pointing to the details on the garments from both manufacturers. I would indicate what was a good example or what was faulty, if a certain detail could be changed to look like the detail that the other manufacturer offered. Details like bad seam stitching, beading, embroidery, pom poms that looked faulty, etc. Hopefully now the manufacturer that we decided to go with will understand specifically what we want changed.

Week 2 day 2, June 1st. Today I worked on putting together modeling agency folders with their contact info. and their models names. Then I worked on compiling a document that contains some of Camilla's potential manufacturers for her sunglasses and purses. I organized the images of the potential products along with their product codes that were sent to us from the manufacturers for Camilla to go through. From there she will be able to choose what manufacturer she wants to go with and what products she will order from them. I continued to work on the press folders. I also was going through manufacturers files to see if they have signed the manufacturing agreement, if they sent us images of the products, samples, and if we have paid the manufacturers.