Internship Assignment B: Organization Profile

Again, for recreational readers:  This blog is kind of boring, but tells a lot about my internship.

a.) The purpose of my organization is to provide the highest quality chocolate and customer service possible to their customers.  In the words of Demarquette, they want people to "Taste the World through Chocolate."

b.) The company is very small, and has a total of about five employees, not including myself.  There are two main owners, Kim and Marc.  Kim is in charge of all the Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, and details regarding those things.  Marc is the main owner and actually makes the chocolate with his very small team.  Linda is the shop manager and she organizes and decorates the shop depending on the time of season, holiday, etc.  She lets Marc know when certain chocolates are running low and need to be produced or when others aren't selling as well.  The chain of command is very flexible because everyone knows their role and is very closely held to that.

c.) New policies would be formed by the collaboration of Marc and Kim.  Because the company is so small, it is easy to address problems, but not as easily dealt with because there aren't many people to handle unexpected incidences.

d.) There are a few main competitors such as Rococo, La Maison du Chocolate, and William Curley.  My first day, I actually visited these places and saw the shops in order to compare them to our marketing strategies and prices.  They often investigate other price ranges and advertising strategies to make sure they are not priced much higher or lower than the average chocolate of the same quality.

e.) The organization is funded from investments of Kim and Marc, as well as direct retail from the chocolate produced.

f.) Demarquette serves high-end customers that have a very refined taste.  Also, the company is extremely corporately responsible so they spend a lot of time promoting the fact that they can source all of their chocolate (that is, they know where all ingredients come from down to the growers and harvesters to make sure slave and child labor is not used).

g.) There are three chocolatiers (including Marc), Kim for advertising, and Linda to keep shop.

h.)  I'm not sure of exact benefits/salaries of the employees, but free chocolate is always a nice extra!  They get to take it home anytime it's about to go off due to shelf life expiration.

i.) The organization is pretty small, so it becomes hard to run it people get sick, take vacation, etc.  The crew has to become very flexible in order to cover everyone if something goes wrong.  The nice part about the small organization is that communication is very simple between everyone.  If someone needs something, they're just a phone call or email away and it will get done.