Le Work

Today marks the start of my third week here at the new job.  Technically.  The first week was only four days long, and the second was only one day, so even though it's the third week, it's only day number six.  But it's still probably high time I told you about what I'm doing, right?  Yeah, I thought so too.

I am the new E-Commerce Customer Service/Order Support Representative for CK Enterprises, which is fancy speak for "I process all of our online orders".  But I haven't been doing a lot of that, since our online store just launched today.  So far I've been doing a little bit of everything; reception, invoicing, order placement, invoicing, filing, invoicing, invoicing, creating pick slips for the warehouse, invoicing, and learning as much as I can about the company and its products.  Oh, and invoicing.  About the company and its products is probably the thing you care about most though.  (And even if it isn't, it's what I'm going to tell you about, so pretend it's what it is.)

CK Enterprises is the parent company of le top, a children's clothing manufacturer.  Le top (the brand) has three lines of children's clothing; le top, le top baby, and rabbitmoon.  Le top and le top baby are typical of what you think of when you think of children's clothing-- colourful, playful, and covered in embroidered ducks and ponies.  Rabbitmoon is much more contemporary-- bolder colours, interesting cuts, mismatched layers, and never, NEVER any ducks.  Rabbitmoon is the line that the business owner says is "what the trendy moms buy".  Which is hilarious to me.  So here's a pictorial example of the difference between le top and rabbitmoon.

Both outfits are adorable, but guess which one is the contemporary outfit that the trendy moms would buy.

In the past, le top has been a wholesaler, selling to high end retail stores (like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus) and independent boutique stores. Lately though, a lot of the boutique stores have had to close or severely cut back their inventory, so the company decided to open an online store to try to make up for the loss of sales from closed or limited boutiques.  Our online store had it's "soft launch" today, which means you could go buy adorable clothing from the store if you already knew the store's web address (or if you followed the link I just gave you), but you won't be able to access the store via the company's website until next week (or possibly the week after if something goes wrong this week) when the "hard launch" is scheduled.  The online store only has le top and le top baby though, the launch for rabbitmoon's online store isn't until August or September.

The work here is interesting, and actually pretty fun so far.  The people here are wonderful, and as I said before, there's more than one person here who I'm determined to befriend outside of work.  It's interesting and varied work, and it's giving me an opportunity to learn about the inner workings of business and how everything is connected; marketing, sales, packing/shipping, invoicing, etc.  And in some ways, I'm learning about fashion as well.  Not in the sense that I'm learning how to pair solids and patterns, but learning about why certain clothes are made from certain fabrics, what a denim weight is and how you chose one, etc. 

But you can't not notice that it's a company that produces children's items.  You can't escape it.  The website is designed in pastels, there are pictures of children all over the walls of the office, the first four things listed in the what the blog is about subtitle are "pregnancy, babies, kids, [and] parenting".  There's no denying that everything in this building is, at its heart, about kids.  There was especially no denying it last Friday, when we had our "Go See", which is where potential models go to the offices of the company for which they want to model.  Which in our case meant 97 children (and their parents, and their toys, and their snacks, and anything else they wanted to bring with them) lined our hallways all morning.  It was loud and stressful and it was hard to focus on work, but at the same time it was also a lot of fun and the kids were all so cute.

Working here simultaneously stirs a desire to have kids and reinforces my desire to NEVER have them.  Which desire will win in the end?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.  But for now, the work is interesting and the atmosphere certainly provides food for thought.