Assignment 1: Portobello, Borough and Camden Markets

I've decided that when I return back to the states, one of the things I'll miss most about London is their market scene.  I absolutely love the fact that you can go to just about any area of town and run into an outdoor market area - whether that means food, souvenirs, or serious shopping there is truly something for everyone.  (I'll add pictures later when I get my computer back...)


Portobello
This place is dangerous.  DO NOT visit if you have a lot of cash on you, because I guarantee you'll end up spending just about all of it here!!  I had quite the day shopping here; it's a great mix of both food and clothing shops.  They also have a lot of vintage antiques and more London-related things that aren't as cliche as regular souvenirs.  In order to get the full experience, I had to try a little of everything, right? :)  I came back to Vandon with a couple scarves, t-shirts, a pair of shoes, a necklace, fruit and veg, other groceries, a gourmet cupcake, and a much lighter purse.  (Mom, you should be proud - I bargained on everything I got!)

This market stretches for about two miles on both sides of the street, including stores in buildings and those set up in the street and on the sidewalks.  If you're looking for gifts to bring home for people, this is the place to go.  It helped that the weather was gorgeous, but the time definitely flew by when we were walking around.  It was also a lot less touristy than other areas of town which was refreshing - that sounds bad now that I look at things because I still feel like one every now and then!


Camden
Camden Market was the closest thing to culture shock that I've ever experienced.  I heard stories from some people in the program that had visited it before me, but still wasn't really sure what to expect.  I decided to explore it one afternoon with a few other girls and we ended up spending hours there.  My first impression was the store fronts... the "architecture" of them was like nothing I'd ever seen before.  Almost every shop has something sticking out of the front of it that describes what's in the shop.  It's definitely a punky area so some of the shops were selling things I've never seen before, and things that I wouldn't have been disappointed never to see. ;)  There was one store that had nothing but things for smoking marijuana, or things with marijuana leaves on them, etc... that's something I never would have seen back at home.

My favorite part of Camden was the area off of the main street that's tucked away by a little river.  It's amazing to see how it develops as the day goes on; the morning starts off with all these little cubicles locked and covered with sheets, then toward the afternoon there are probably HUNDREDS of shops that come out of the woodwork.  People start bringing things out of their shops to put on display for people to see and try as you walk throughout the market.  The first time we went, we walked past a restaurant selling Chinese food and the owner was getting all of us to try what he was making, then he did a rap to tell us the names of everything.  He ended his performance by telling us that we could get a free drink with our meals - one of the most entertaining things I'd seen there by far.

We also visited a store called Cyber Dog... I literally can not describe it in words.  It's something you have to see for yourself if you visit London because pictures weren't allowed in the store, otherwise I would have shared!  The only way I can begin to explain it is a store for ravers... 90% of the store is lit with black lights and  they use robots for manikins.  They also have live cage dancers to entertain shoppers (as if the actual merchandise doesn't do that well enough).  If you've ever seen Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, that is about as close as I can get to describing the clothing there. I think the best way to shop there would be if you were on drugs... but maybe that's just me?

Borough
This was exactly what I pictured a traditional outdoor market to be.  It was strictly food - some raw and some prepared - and it was also a bit upscale for my price range.  It was amazing to see, though, because we had walked through it at night when there was nothing set up and it is literally a concrete slab that is covered underneath a roof.  You would never guess that during the day it is bustling with shoppers and fresh, British-grown food.  If I would have had more money to spend, I would have been in heaven; I settled on a steak sandwich and a piece of cheesecake which were both much cheaper than I anticipated (but still not cheap).  It's a great place to visit if you're feeling "a bit peckish" as Mark would say, because a bunch of the tents have free samples for you to try.

Essentially, I think the markets are an amazing way to get a taste of what London used to be and experience the parts that aren't as well-known.

Where has the time gone? (PT 1: Bath, Lacock Village)

It's hard to believe we've been in London for almost six weeks.  That's a month and a half, ladies and gents... my time here is quickly falling through my fingers and I'm starting to realize that I'm not going to be able to do everything that I hoped.  For any of you who've never experienced that - it SUCKS.  That's why I'm going to make the most of what I have left!  Obviously, I haven't been blogging as much as I should be (hey, I've been busy!) so I'm going to attempt to catch everyone up on things....

Where to begin... well two weekends ago we went on a trip planned through our program to Bath and Lacock Village.  We stopped at Stonehenge on the way, which was about as exciting as a pile of rocks can be.  We enjoyed ourselves, though, while we tried to reenact a picture from the Central Study Abroad program with some of the students jumping in the air... about 30 jumps later, our photographers let us know that apparently capturing these pictures is a lot harder than it seems.   

I am learning to love the trips that I don't have to plan anything for - probably not a good realization when I think I want to do event planning for a living.  Oops!  Anyway, we arrived in Bath and were staying at a hostel in a YMCA.  I thought it was a little odd, but it was also my first hostel experience.  It was really nice, considering we shared a room with a bunch of girls from our program so we didn't really have to worry about keeping an eye on things. 

The first day we were there we toured the Roman Baths in the city, and they were absolutely amazing.  It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we were walking on the actual ground that ancient Romans had built 2000 years prior, but it was definitely an experience.  After that, we walked around and window shopped a bit and got to know the city.  I absolutely loved that place - it was small enought that everything in town is within walking distance, but still hugely populated.  I feel like they have come as close to modern-day as you can get in an ancient place without ruining the beauty of it all.  Later that night, we went on a ghost walk, which ended up being more of a history lesson.  I think our tour guide forgot a couple times that he was supposed to be telling us about ghosts, and not about what role they had in the military.  There were several instances where he would trail off on some history tangent and end with: "Oh, and the ghost is said to be found (insert location here)."  We were all freezing our tails off too, so that didn't make things any more interesting.  Tess and I also had to pee... really, really bad.  It got to the point that we physically couldn't hold it anymore, but none of the shops were open anymore and we didn't want to leave the group.  So what did we do?  Found a nice spot in a tree in one the park during one of his lectures to relieve ourselves.  Keep in mind that would never happen anywhere in London with all the CCTV everywhere, but we managed to sneak off well enough. :) PS this is a judge-free blog.

That night we went out to a club in town, which we opened... as in, we were the very first group of people to show up.  We were also the last to leave, and it was an absolute blast.  Some friends and I just danced around on the dance floor and hoped that more people would eventually show up that weren't from Pella, IA.  Shortly after we arrived, a bigger group of guys showed up so Tess and I decided to go see where they were from.  It turned out they were a club rugby team that had come to see the same rugby match we were going to the next day, and they were also staying at the YMCA.  We found out the hard way later on that night that they were also on the same floor.  After dancing with some of them, my friend Holly grabbed me and goes "I have a secret to tell you... all of these guys are SIXTEEN!!"  I couldn't compose myself, it was SO funny... I asked one of the kids how old he was, and his response was "I can drive!  I can drive!"  I sure hope I wasn't that stupid when I was their age.  ;)  So when we returned to our hostel, we got a series of random pounds on our door in the middle of the night, followed by a bunch of teenage laughter that we could hear out our window.  I'm glad we could provide them with some entertainment that night. HA

The next day we went to a rugby match which was so interesting to see... the closest I'd ever been to understanding that game was when I went to Invictus in theatres.  Regardless of being completely clueless, we cheered when everyone else cheered and booed when everyone else booed, so we didn't completely stick out!  I just felt like I was watching football back in the states - not sure if I'll ever truly understand how that game works.  There was a group of middle-aged men sitting in front of us that our director told us was a Stag Party, which apparently is like the same thing as a bachelor party.  Their theme was "country gentlemen" so they were all dressed like Sherlock Holmes and had fake shotguns with the bachelor dressed as a fox in the middle of their fox hunt.  I don't think I've ever seen any group of men drink so much beer in such a small amount of time and still be standing straight up.  They were obviously well-conditioned. 

Sunday, we went to the village of Lacock, which is a super tiny medieval town about an hour from Bath.  It was adorable, but it also took about five minutes to walk from one end to the other.  We toured an Abbey there where apparently there were some Harry Potter scenes filmed (woopdy dooooo....).  Yes, I am a Harry Hater.  I took some pictures to share with friends back home that might understand where they're from, but I really could have cared less.  I sure hope that doesn't make me a bad person.  Bahahahaha! 

By the way, pictures are coming later... after I fill you in on my current situation.

Internship Journal Weeks Jan 30-31 & Feb 6-7

The past couple weeks were quite different in comparison to each other.  The second week of my internship (30-31) I was in the office by myself... Kim entrusted me with a key to the shop and left me with plenty of work to keep myself busy!  He was spending the week in Germany partially to spend time with his family, and partially to attend a food trade show to get new ideas for using chocolate, marketing, etc.  During those couple days, I spent a lot of my time doing what I love MOST.... cold calls.  (If you know me well, you'll know that I spent an entire summer doing cold calls door-to-door for a printing company, and didn't see much come out of it besides sweaty clothes and a thicker skin!)  Anyway, they weren't totally cold because I at least had the people's names to contact, but most were editors of big magazine and newspaper publications and didn't have time for little people like me!  It wasn't too bad, but I spent the time trying to find out if the writers were doing special features for Easter or the Queen's Diamond Jubilee so we can start PR targeted toward them asap.

Apparently, I finished that incredibly quickly and started running out of things to do so I started doing my SECOND favorite thing in London... blogging. (<- This one's for you, Jen and Mark!)  Demarquette has a Wordpress blog, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter to keep up with all of the ridiculous social networking that is now essential in PR and marketing.  Blogging is a great way to market to freelance food writers that are passionate about what they eat and love to share their opinions with others.  Kim is giving me a lot of freedom on the blog, as well as the responsibility to keep it updated to make sure people have something new to read on a semi-regular basis.  I love writing, especially if it's something I'm passionate about, and chocolate is not far from that!  This is where week two filters into week three...

The third week, Kim and I collaborated a lot on continuing to write the blog, as well as preparing a monthly newsletter for subscribers (check out what I've been working on!).  As we all know, Valentine's Day is upon us and it is very important that we market it as much as possible to have as little excess inventory left over at the end of things.  In order to do that, we wrote a few blog posts, then cross-linked it to our facebook and Twitter pages to get people thinking about us during the holiday.  When people think about Valentine's Day, we want them to think, "Demarquette!"

In the same way, we wanted to push certain products for Valentine's Day sales so we developed different promotions and features in the newsletter in order to accomplish that.  It's interesting to work with Kim because he handles literally every part of PR and marketing there is in the business, along with online sales and keeping the website up-to-date.  He has a lot on his plate, so sometimes things like the newsletter get pushed aside or rushed and aren't done as well as they could be.  That's where I come in!  We both look over each other's writing a lot to make sure it's grammatically correct, sounds enticing and makes people want to shop with us!

As for cultural experiences.. I really haven't had many.  I'm actually surprised how fast-paced my company is, considering its tiny size in comparison to a lot of others that I've talked to.  The fact that there are only a few people working for the company makes it tough to take time off, so they have a huge responsibility in keeping it going.

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.

Internship Assignment A: Outline of Goals, Objectives and Tasks

Note: if you're reading this blog for fun, skip over my assignments. :)

1. Goal/Skill: Plan Easter event and bring to completion
1. Correlate with my managers to learn about the company and what they want to accomplish within the event.
2. Learn about the details that go into planning an event and communicate with the people necessary to bring everything together.
2. Improve my skills as a communicative writer
1. Write for the Demarquette blog and have it edited by my manager to correct British spelling, grammar, etc.
2. Help develop the company's newsletter and become more descriptive and creative in my writing.
3. Goal/Skill: Build the company's database and in turn increase their sales
1. Find companies that are growing and have potential to buy in the area of high-end chocolate.
2. Get in contact with those people and promote our business to them.