LIM College

LIM College has a long tradition of partnering with leading companies throughout all sectors of the fashion and retail industries to provide students with life-changing, real-world work experiences. Jennifer Cohen and Erica Pierson were chosen for a month-long Visual Merchandising internship at Grottini Retail Environments in Porto Recanati, Italy.

by Jennifer Cohen

During my first full week at Grottini, I began to transition into a part of a team dynamic. I was working alongside and receiving help from Erica Pierson, another LIM College Student and the other employees at the office and reporting back to Keith, the head of design, to get feedback on ideas for actual real world projects. 

Within my first week I began to work with Erica and Keith on a presentation for Butterfly Twist, a women's shoe company. One of my first assignments was to begin fine tuning the presentations that we had previously sent to the people at Butterfly Twist.

Although they had liked the presentations that we had sent to them, there was still a decent amount of feedback and suggestions sent back to us. For me, this was my first experience working with a client and having them look at potential ideas for a project and saying, "Okay this is good, but change all of this."

I think that experiences like this helped me to better understand the reality of working with a client. It is all about expressing your ideas clearly to one another and working together to come up with creative solutions to problems. It is not harsh criticism, but suggestions that one party gives to another so that they can work together and create the best solution.