My First Two Weeks of Co-op @ The North Face/Full Circle Group, LLC.

  Hello everyone,

My name is Leanna Schwartz and I am currently a junior D&M Major working at Full Circle Group, LLC in West Chester, PA doing fashion merchandising. Full Circle Group, LLC is an agency that represents the mid-Atlantic region for The North Face. The owner, Bill Brown, bought a house for the company (about 12 people) a couple of years ago, so it’s definitely a very cool and comfortable environment to work in. Not all 12 employees are here everyday since many of them are traveling Reps for the company, but there are usually four other employees here including Bill everyday. So to get to understand what I am doing a little better, here is a little log of what I am doing each day at Full Circle Group LLC.

Monday (9/24/2012): My first day on the job I filled out paperwork for the job, and met with a few of my co-workers and the owner of Full Circle Group LLC, Bill Brown. Many of my co-workers are reps that travel with sample items of The North Face products for each season. The samples for each season are scanned (using a scanner and Microsoft Excel) and separated by rep and type of clothing (ex: men’s outdoor, youth girls, equipment, etc), and once done, the reps travel to their respective accounts to showcase the latest North Face options. Once the next season is available for showing, the previous seasons samples are brought back here (to West Chester), scanned once again, and then packaged to return to The North Face corporate headquarters in California.  In short, the samples start here and end back here and the beginning processes are reversed once the samples are showcased by the reps. So the samples I was scanning and boxing were Spring samples (which were being sent back to California to be sold).

Tuesday (9/25/2012): My second day at work I met the rest of the team and we continued working with the Spring and Transition samples. First I worked on organizing, scanning, and boxing Spring footwear samples with 3 other people. Then about 10 of us worked on scanning and boxing all of the Spring and Transition samples and getting them ready to be shipped back to The North Face. We also received the Fall 2013 samples for each Rep.

Wednesday (9/26/2012): The entire team organized the hangers by size and type to prepare for the mass amount Fall samples that will be coming in this week (The North Face does 85% of their business in the fall/winter seasons!). I then got to sit in on a GTM (Go-To-Market) meeting with the team. In the meeting, Bill and the team discussed various things such as our overarching responsibilities as being employees of Full Circle Group, LLC and also our responsibilities to The North Face. So Bill first talked to us about what is going well, what is expected to change from last year to this year, and the things we should all be focusing on. He then went on to discuss the latest updates with The North Face such as the company’s newest technologies and innovations and how we currently compare to our competition. This meeting was also a time for Full Circle Group employees to give their feedback and discuss whatever matters were at hand.

Thursday (9/27/2012): I scanned and hung up the fall samples that we have received so far this year for each Rep. After that, I did some projects for Eileen (one of the lovely women I work with) that helped to familiarize myself with The North Face products and the advanced technology built into them. I was given an excel spreadsheet of about 30 of our apparel products and worked to fill in The North Face technologies that each garment has. I also was given a product list, and was assigned to find the current image of that product on The North Face image database. Liz (the business manager at Full Circle Group, LLC) also ordered my ticket for the sales meeting in Lake Tahoe ticket (the sales meeting is in October).

Friday (9/28/2012) I scanned and hung up fall samples again in the morning (we receive new shipments everyday). I also ordered some North Face clothes for the company sales meeting next month in Lake Tahoe so I would have the appropriate attire for the meetings. I then created vouchers to be placed on each seat for a speaker series event that is this Tuesday October 2^nd, 2012 in Washington DC. Each voucher was a different color, which corresponded to a different gift that that person would receive. So I created 4 different double-sided vouchers in Photoshop using The North Face images, logos, and fonts. (http://www.thenorthface.com/en_US/get-outdoors/view_all_speaker_series_events/)

Monday (10/1/2012):  I finished the vouchers that I started on Friday. I then worked on organizing some more fall samples.

Tuesday (10/2/2012) I continued to work on unpacking fall samples.

Wednesday (10/3/2012) I continued to work on unpacking fall samples. I also started working on two ads, a men’s ad and women’s ad for a store called Tony Walker & Co. which is one of the companies we supply to. So again, I worked in Photoshop using images and products from The North Face database to customize an ad that suits both The North Face image as well as Tony Walker & Co. image.

Thursday (10/4/2012) I continued to work on the ads for Tony Walker & Co. I also went out to lunch with my co-worker, Eileen and a man who is in charge of coordinating a run that The North Face is sponsoring this upcoming weekend in the Philadelphia area to discuss the schedule of events for the upcoming race.

Friday (10/5/2012) I worked on unpacking LOTS of fall samples for the reps again today. It can be very tedious, but it is very interesting to see the spectrum of products that The North Face puts out every season, and the immense amount of technology that goes into a majority of the products.