This episode of The Glam Observer Podcast is full of insights!
I chat with Emily Shum, Merchandising Assistant at Balenciaga about so many interesting things. She studied at FIT in New York and interned every year when she was in school. She has always been a hard worker since when she was in school, it’s not a surprise in fact, that she’s only 22 but already has many experiences in the industry at big names such as Carolina Herrera, Saint Laurent and now Balenciaga.
She started with a PR internship at Carolina Herrera. At that time she didn’t know she wanted to work in merchandising yet, but in the episode, she said that if she could go back she would do again the pr internship rather than going straight into merchandising and why she believes that a pr internship is the best way to get your foot in the door.
After her PR internship, she tried to apply for a merchandising internship always at Carolina Herrera but she got turned down as they required previous experience in merchandising despite it was an internship.
So she quit and went to a sportswear company, gained the merchandising experience she needed and returned to Carolina Herrera to finally work as the merchandiser intern.
She didn’t stop there, in fact, while she was still in school she did one more internship at Saint Laurent and then landed at Balenciaga as buying intern before becoming merchandising assistant.
So with all these experiences, in this podcast episode we talk about many interesting things such as:
- how to balance many internships during college
- the different versions of merchandising and how this role changes a lot from a company to the other and also if you’re working in the headquarter or in another region.
- the difference between the role of the buyer of the merchandiser and why her role is more similar to the one of the buyer
- how she’s working from home today during the pandemic
- how to network
- and how you can learn more about fashion even if you didn’t go to fashion school
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