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Grottini Retail Environments Internship: Erica - First Days at the Office

posted by LIM College

by Erica Pierson

Erica_Pierson_300My first day on the job at Grottini I arrived at the office around 8:15. I felt a little nervous about where to go and what I would be doing, but definitely very excited for what was to come.

I was introduced to every person that I saw and instantly overwhelmed with Italian names! They sat me down at a desk and for a while I was unsure of what I should be doing so I took the initiative and asked. Keith, the Head of Design, was coming in later that day and he was the one I would be working with directly. (He's also is from the U.S. which made working a lot easier.)

Once Keith arrived he began to brief me on the upcoming projects I would be working on for the month I would be interning at Grottini. The first was creating a shop-in-shop inside of Topshop stores all over the world for the women's shoe company Butterfly Twists 

Butterfly_Twists_GoldButterfly Twists is based out of London and Keith had just gotten back from London that day and was describing to me what the client was looking to achieve. He also mentioned working on marketing banners for the new Customer Collaboration Center that Grottini had just built for the pasta company Barilla. And we discussed the branding of a new company, Intelligent Store.

From that day forward I threw my heart and soul into creating a shop-in-shop for Butterfly Twists, which was our main focus and biggest project. We worked directly with the clients from Butterfly Twists through Skype call meetings where we would get a better feeling of the direction they wanted to go in.

Keith and I, and another LIM College student, Jenifer Cohen, would take the feedback and information from Butterfly Twists and brainstorm creating sketches, renderings, and presentations with inspiration. We had to make sure the designs we were creating would be suitable for Grottini, Topshop, and Butterfly Twists.

The Butterfly Twists project was starting to develop further and we were getting closer to narrowing down all the ideas we had come up with. The client changed the direction they had originally gave us and instead wanted us to focus on three concepts: 

  1. The idea of a sushi conveyor belt for the shoes to travel along
  2. A fun Ferris wheel display for the shoes 
  3. A giant butterfly cage atmosphere for customers to walk into

We took each one of these ideas and brainstormed them separately, creating individual sketches, fixtures, and displays for each concept. Then we created separate PowerPoint presentations and sent them to the client for feedback.

Topics: Italy, fashion internships

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