Day 1 June 6, 2011

On the first day of the intership I arrived at the Carolina Place mall in Pineville, North Carolina at 9:00 a.m. and met Meredith and Tony at the front entrance of Belks. We started out with a quick overview of the days activities and then got straight to work. Tony had me start off scanning the mesh polo shirts to see which ones were on sale and which ones werent. When I finished pulling the mesh shirts that were on sale off of the shelf me and Tony set up the sale fixture in the aisle, which was our first main focus as Tony descrbied it was very improtant to get our sale set first. Then I continued to help pull on sale shirts and set the sale with Tony until lunch. During lunch Tony, Meredith and I went to eat and Tony showed me and Meredith the numbers from each store he is over and which stores and products are increaseing or decreaseing from last quarter and the reasons why the numbers are showing a decrease or increase. After lunch the focus was getting the Havana Nights display set which is the new display that has been sent out to each store. Tony described to us how the displays should look the same in each store and also explained to us the pshycology behind setting the displays and where to set them. Tony also described in depth the way the Polo Ralph Lauren store is set up so that shoppers will choose one item, and immediately see other items in near by areas that can also be bought by the shopper in the same categorie. For example the bathing suits are right beside the summer shirts, and the North Port display lead you into the Havana Nights display which plays off of summer. For the remainder of the day we did several different tasks in which we made sure the store was set for our sell in the right exact way. We also compared our store to competitors store (which ours was much more impessive). We finished the day around 5:00 p.m. The first day was very exciting, as we had no downtime and were constantly working. Going forward into this internship I find my self more intrigued and excited to learn about the industry and to try to find ways to put my own personal mark on it.

- Collin Allison
North Carolina State University
Fashion and Apparel Management
Brand Management and Marketing