Lydia Shenton-Smith's Blog

This week I have been working from home having my online calls with Emma and making further progress with my Online and Offline Marketing Report. This has consisted of covering the rest of the content for our exam next month and completing mock exams to familiarise ourselves with the types of questions we could be faced with.  It has been great catching up with Emma and getting to grips with the content and knowledge required. With some more revision over the following weeks I feel as though I will be confident taking the exam. 

At Arabella we have been busy with customers this week and we have even had a new drop of Rundholz pieces. This has been the main buzz for everyone with one piece in particular... the Rundholz LEATHER Jacket.  Our customers have been going crazy over this piece, even Val has had it on and fallen in love.  

We are open for business! It's a very exciting time for all of us, staff as well as customers. It has been a crazy week, with opening and trying to process all of the Black Friday orders. We have had hundreds of orders over the weekend that all need packaging and sending out.  We did email campaigns last week on the build up to Black Friday, these must of paid off and working efficiently as the response we've had off our customers couldn't have been predicted.  

This week has been very exciting... We reopen for customers next Wednesday. It is the last week of lockdown and we can't wait to open again and welcome people in. Even though we are excited, we have a lot of work to do.  We have all been collaboratively working during Lockdown, out of one shop, so we need to put everything back to normal for the customers. To further add to our workload, Jade has decided to rearrange and redesign the layout of both shops. It is a race against time to get everything organised and ready but as always Jade is being very optimistic.  Not only have we got the reopening to plan, it's Black Friday and we have got LOTS of sales to organise and plan. 

In order to boost both sales and moral for people isolated at home, we are doing a Weekly Lockdown Treat. This is where we have a discounted brand e.g. Mama B and we will have 10% off Mama B for a whole week for people to take full advantage of and treat themselves.  This will mean we benefit from people making purchases of the selected brand as well as the customer benefiting through feeling special when they receive their new pieces in the post. A little something to boost their week. 

I  have been working from home this week on phone calls with Emma making a start on my Online and Offline Marketing Report. Due to Lockdown and the safety of  both the Escalla staff and Apprentices we haven't been able to go into the Academy for this training week.  We have made a start on the content we will need to know for our exam in January. Topics including, The 7 Principles of Marketing, Meredith Belbin, The Product Lifecycle and The Customer Lifecycle. We will be building on this knowledge in the next training week. 

From Thursday this week we have officially began the National Lockdown... this means we can't see friends and family and any trips have to be essential.  I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to carry on working to maintain the online side of the business and ensure all the orders are promptly sent out to all of the customers. We are offering Click & Collect for local customers however we can not open the store for them to have a browse.  We have also been very busy creating our Lockdown Gift Bags, this was an idea that people 'entered' to receive one by asking us for our 'Lockdown Pie Recipe' that was broadcasted on our Live Show. This meant that anyone who did ask had watched that show and were a loyal customer so deserved to win a Lockdown Gift Bag. However because we has so many entries we sent one out too everyone.  They included, bird seed, a toilet roll, some seeds, chocolate, candles, hand sanitiser, a face mask and a £10 gift voucher to be used with...

Customers have been very pro-active this week. We have been very busy in store, this could be a result of the second Lockdown approaching quickly. This is a lovely part of the job as I get to see the strong relationships between Val, Jade and Yas and the regular customers we see in store.  This is all about the Arabella Community we have and has been built over the years. It is something anyone will clearly see when visiting the shop or going online to see the interactions we have on our social media platforms with customers and friends. 

This week at Arabella we have been very busy with Pre-Loved items! We've had many pieces being sent in from our customers. This then leads to the tasks of profiling and photographing the pieces.  All of these tasks need to be completed for the available pieces by Wednesday, as this is the day we do our Pre-Loved Live Show. This Live Show in particular draws lots of attention as people are excited to see the new arrivals we have received over the previous week.