Even before the internship got started, there were butterflies in the stomach. Thoughts like, ''How would the 2 months go by?'', ''Will I be able to manage the work that will be given?'' and the worst of all, ''Do I actually even know what work I will be assigned there''? Woah! It was a conundrum of limitless questions that run through the mind. One thing I can say after finally traversing the 2 months journey is that
it was beautiful!
I had the privilege of interning with the legacy called
Victorinox -
solemnly tag-lined as the original Swiss knife-maker. The brand has been telling folklores for 135 years now, and I could not have asked for a better organisation to induct myself into from 1st April to 31 May 2019. A fun-filled, mildly-grilled 61-day package with wonderful insights about the company culture, networking with the management personnel and of course the practicality of the otherwise theoretical sales and marketing learnings at the workplace.
I was assigned the High Street Phoenix mall at Lower Parel for the first month, and, barring the initial concerns I had with travelling in a Mumbai local, I was greeted with a bunch of professionals who were extremely amicable but result oriented at the same time. Thinking back, I had found alignment with the work culture almost instantly.
I would not shy away from mentioning Mr Rajeev Kurup (the store manager there) who is an excellent Salesman and even better human being. He made me feel comfortable and sought to correct any mistakes that I made while dealing with the customer in person.
Mr Satish Baria (sales executive) is a special mention here because of his ability to deliver at any cost! He took the pain of teaching me about the entire range of products that the store had with a constant smile on his face. He would say, "
Knowledge, only if shared, has value, '' and that was the key take away for me during the stint there.
I would, of course, mention the name of the store director, Mr. Ratan Irani, the man who is an excellent networker, a veteran in the field of sales and a brilliant people manager. I would discuss the nuances of salesmanship and public relations with him and at no point did it feel like I was speaking to an ex-logistics head of Flipkart, and former CEO at BlueDart Logistics. The second learning for me here was that no
matter how much you achieve in your life, always stay grounded.
Till the end of the month,
I had interacted with more than 700 customers and all this while I was focussing on the strategies that could increase sales. I had personally sent emails to around 35 customers who I researched to have bought enough times to be considered as
our promoters. Although the results were not instantaneous, the store started receiving a lot of calls for inquiry regarding the new items on sale and arrivals of a few new brands in the store. One thing that I worked upon was the
inventory management and put across to the management the possible cost-cutting we could achieve if we
a. streamline the stocks in the warehouse and
b. plan the inventories in advance by creating a database of fast-moving, slow-moving and non- moving items.
The second half of the internship was at the
Marketcity Phoenix, where I had the pleasure of working with a team which wanted to catch up with the rest of the stores across India. The tactic was to come at par with the competing brands like Samsonite and American Tourister first and then looking at things from pan India perspective.
I was supported by the
store manager Mr Dixit Chavan there who personally helped me in
mapping the competition and we came out with the strategy of following with the
80-20 rule, i.e. the 20% of the top selling items should be kept in good shape and shouldn't be compromised with so that they give us the perennial 80% sales. We broke the situation further and realised that store facade and presentation should be altered a bit to get into customer's eyes quickly. We even created a portfolio of frequent travellers, foreign going students and the business trippers and floated them with emails in cadence to their needs and
planned out a quick response mechanism for any query related.
Overall, the experiences were quite satisfying and I had a lot of customer insights that I took along. The front end may seem like an easy job but
it is highly critical to be the face of a company! I loved the experience and can say that internships should have versatile daily KPIs of interns instead of just desk jobs!
Students will develop perspectives then! Only then can they understand the equilibrium between customer needs and the value offerings!
Thank you Victorinox family for everything :-)