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.