Internship at Ardistia New York | Jakarta

The internship program is my last subject that I should take to complete one of the requirements to graduate from LaSalle College Jakarta. I started the internship from June 8th until August 8th 2015. It was a great experience for me to get practical experiences from the theories that I have gathered throughout my one and a half year of college life. I did my internship in the marketing department of an Indonesian high end label, Ardistia New York.

In this internship program I did variety of activities, not only the marketing department. Besides marketing, I was also involved in public relation and sales. The first task was to do researching and completing unfinished database such as fashion bloggers, Indonesian media/magazine data, so they can contact them trough e-mail. Another thing I did was creating the wardrobe loan data. So they can keep track with the clothes that are borrowed by stylists and update it if the photos are already sent by them.

There was a day when Iqbal, the head of sales division, teach me how to arrange the clothes rack based on colours before customers were about to come to shop at the Ardistia New York showroom. Apart from that, I was also given the task of rearranging the clothes rack in the inventory room and listed down the name, type of products, size, and price for all clothes to be input to inventory data base. My co-worker and I counted the stock manually in the inventory room, and put it in the stock data base. We also handle the stock for 2 online store: bobobobo.com and paraplo.com

I also helped the sales division to send several stocks to Central Department store in Grand Indonesia Shopping Town. In this moment, I gained knowledge of how to load stock to department store. I must pass through some procedures to be able to supply goods to the store, and enter the mall through the loading basement. After I sent the stocks to Central, Iqbal asked me to change the mannequin's clothes to the new arrival jumpsuit that i've brought.

Lisa, the marketing manager asked me to make a future collection photo shoot concept. This includes deciding where the studio is going to be, what background will be used, the model, what kind of makeup and hair that is suitable for the whole look, the video campaign concept, and the background music. I always help Lisa when there was media appointment who wants to borrow clothes. The process is simple; greet the stylist, let them choose the clothes they want to borrow, and then fill in the loan form for us to keep and for the stylist as the evidence. Lisa also asked me to style looks for Indonesian celebrity because she wanted to borrow Ardistia New York clothes.

Other exciting things I did is to do a visual merchandiser job; designing and making an illustration of a fashion installation/window display for the Pacific Place Bazaar art Jakarta. Galeries Lafayette organises the art festival with dedicated theme for art on August 3th to August 30th 2015. For the window display, I combined the name of Ardistia New York's collection "The Scientist" with the inspiration of the collection which is "Biotechnology" which means futuristic, clean, organics,and all about the nature. Scientist is related to labotary, safety goggles, glassware, colourful liquid, and lots of notes. While biotechnology can be defined as the use of living systems and organisms to develop or make products, often with plans. So why don't we smashed it together and make a botanical lab?

I invited my aunt to shop at Ardistia New York showroom. She ended up buying 3 skirts, 1 top, 2 dress, and 1 outer wear! She was happy with her purchases because she thought the clothes fit so well on her and had a slimming effect haha.

After 2 months having an internship program at Ardistia New York, I feel that there were many lessons that I gained to star my career as someone who is going to work in the business side of fashion like fashion marketer, visual merchandiser, fashion buyer, and more. I learned basically anything in the business side of fashion. I gained knowledge and skills after implementing what I've learned so far to resolve the existing tasks with full of responsibility. I learned to be more cooperative with my colleagues. I learned to be persuasive when offering products to customers, which would increase their desire for shopping. My responsibility is to always on time when submitting work, to always be on time arriving at the office, and do the best in every work they gave me.

I believe that the knowledge and experience gained through this time at Ardistia New York would come in handy and will be beneficial for my future path after graduating, as it has opened up another possible career route for me! :)