Vita’s Blog: Mentoring Month
We’ve recently finished two weeks of business mentoring at Burberry, an experience I’ll take forward as such a privilege and honour. It’s truly been amazing.
Shadowing each department and observing how they all interact with such open transparency, in such an organic process, has been fascinating and a real pleasure. It’s been a real insight into how a global brand with such a successful profile as Burberry operates.
Everyone is so nice too, which makes the experience even more pleasurable. We’ve been introduced to all the various design teams, marketing & PR, show strategy, merchandising, technical development and product development and that’s just in one week! Every day I learn something new to take into the future of my business.
Right now I’m sourcing fabrics and trims, meeting fabric agents – we had a really useful chat at IMG Fashion with fabric agent Richard Jarvis from Trade Mate and I’ve already placed an order with him for some trims. This stage is always a tricky one as there are so many companies and agents to deal with and manage – and with lead-times, minimum order quantities, etc., it’s not always straight-forward. How I long for one vast department store of wholesale fabrics and trims!
The three of us also spent some time with the girls at Good Relations Life talking through media training, and learnt some useful tools in devising our own PR profile. I find this incredibly useful as right now, am doing all my own PR and marketing for the label. So every snippet of knowledge and advice is very well received.
The team at Fashion Fringe has been such a support – really warm and helpful, proffering advice as and when we need it and leading us to clarification on issues we might be just starting to deal with.
All in all it’s been exhilarating, intense and I’m just really excited about the summer – we got a sneak preview glimpse of our studios at London College of Fashion the other day and they’re huge! I can’t wait to fill mine with hard work and creativity.
~ Vita
New studio key and a celebratory glass of fizz!
