Author: amyh882

Sadly, this was the last day of our internship program. To save money on parking, I drove Will and Parker to work today. Triple carpooling was definitely a smart move in downtown Raleigh. We walked into HQ Raleigh ready to grind. I finished the hangtag designs, the black tags being the most popular among our team.

Making the tags was a useful project and experience. The criterion of being aesthetically pleasing while also containing useful information is a bit of a challenge, and if there was more time, I would edit the hangtags to the best of my ability, but since it was the last day and Mr. Self had only asked for a prototype, I decided to focus on helping the team improve the presentation. We worked hard on correcting the flow of the presentation and before we knew it, lunch break was upon us.

We headed to Transfer Co. Food Hall for lunch, where we met up with Alexandra Ellison, my fellow peer who was shadowing in the ER. We conversed on comfortable couches and headed back to HQ. We booked another conference room for our final meet up with Mr. Self and added finishing touches to our PowerPoint.

Once we finished our presentation with Mr. Self, he told us that with a few minor tweaks, he would be able to use this presentation in various circumstances, whether it be to the professors at Vector Textiles or even to a potential customer. We were all proud of all the work that we accomplished over the past 8 days. He explained to us that he was proud of our work ethic and diligence we had put into meeting his expectations and even allotting extra time to work on the topics that he presented as optional. I learned a lot about marketing over the course of the program and met lots of people, an important way to get a little leg up in the future. I am grateful for Caroline from R!OT for providing us the workspace and booking our conference rooms and being a friendly face we could turn to for any questions or requests. Mr. Self provided us with an amazing opportunity to make a difference in the real world and providing important research to help with a start-up company.

After the presentation, we shook hands with our boss and headed out for the day. As a last hurrah, we zoomed to the 8th floor of the parking deck and savored our last moment as The Interns. With that, we drove back to Cary.

The Work Experience Program was very helpful in giving me a taste of what a real job feels like. Although the first job I get will not be as laid back as our internship, there are lots of important tips that I learned. Good communication, good presentation skills, and good teamwork are all essential in getting the job done. During the 8 days, I have become closer with my fellow teammates, some of whom I had barely spoken with during the school year. It was an overwhelmingly positive experience and I highly recommend it to rising juniors:)

Today, Team Mawan worked hard from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm and 1:15 pm to 4:30 pm to finish our final presentation. Mr. Self tasked me to design hangtags and possible alternative logos for Vector Textiles, a cool way to integrate graphic design into our market research. After slaving all morning and dealing with a mildly infuriating program, I finished some logos. I then proceeded to come up with phrases and information to be presented on possible hangtags on clothing that utilizes the Vector Textiles technology.

It was considerate of Mr. Self to task me with a design project since I came into the work experience program looking for another aspect of design: marketing. In order to create an effective, eye-catching product, certain phrases need to stand out more than others. Mr. Self also wanted us to focus on how to build the brand, and with the right design on the tags, it was the perfect attention-grabbing tag. The whole team worked hard on our final presentation, which turned out to be 30 something slides, and awaited Mr. Self’s arrival at HQ Raleigh. We booked a conference room and headed out for lunch at Cookout. Along the way, we rolled down the car window to accept newspapers a guy on the corner was handing out, and it turned out to be a really sketchy read.

We arrived back at HQ and set up the conference room.

Parker Perkins joined our team on Monday, due to an unforeseen conflict in his work experience. He helped a lot with the presentation and integrated well with our market research project.

Mr. Self arrived and we began our presentation. As the resident graphic designer, I was so busy working on the hangtags and alternative logos that I didn’t get a chance to check over the presentation and help with formatting. Mr. Self recognized the lack of coherence in our draft presentation and gave us notes and pointers to help make it stronger. He gave lots of feedback and advice that was really helpful and made sense. Tomorrow, Team Mawan & Parker are looking forward to making the right changes and present our final presentation to Mr. Self!

Today was the day where the final presentation would be thrown into action. As instructed by Mr. Self, we were to conceptualize our findings and present the different types of markets and customer personas specific to Vector Textiles. With that, we got to work. Overall, today was productive, but with a little time leftover, we decided to humor ourselves with a few funny images.

In all seriousness, we managed to create a viable outline for our final presentation. Highlighting all the possible markets and creating an appealing design was our top priorities. Mr. Self wanted the presentation to be a mix of education and minimal words, so we struck a balance by putting bullet points and pictures with every slide. It was a pretty uneventful day since we were just researching and putting together the PowerPoint. We kept in touch with Mr. Self over Slack and headed home for the day. I am excited to finalize our information to present to Mr. Self!

Mr. Self booked us a tour at 10 am today at the Vector Textiles lab at NC State University. He initially warned us about getting lost, but Will and I never expected to be driving down a dirt road lined with horses, cows, and goats. As we traveled closer to the lake near the back of the Veterinary Clinic at NC State, we realized that we were lost. Rather, the address that we typed in got confused since there were two roads with the same name. We frantically called another member of Team Mawan to send their current location, and soon we arrived at the one-story building that was the Vector Textiles lab. Mr. Self also brought his dog, Lyda, with him. She was very shy but sweet.

A very adamant entomologist, Grayson, was our tour guide. He showed us lots of scientific tools, such as the insanely cold freezers (-80 degrees C) to the huge centrifuge with a jet engine. After a rundown of the different rooms and labs, he took us to the mosquito room. There were shelves of thousands of mosquitos, a few hundred in each glass cube.

Grayson then proceeded to stick his hand a vat of mosquitos, which elicited perplexed responses from Team Mawan. He relieved some anxiety by explaining that it takes a couple of seconds for the mosquitos to actually draw blood, so he had to shake his forearm every couple of seconds.

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He then showed us the testing room, which contained a net, where they have subjects sleep under the net overnight and then tally up the number of bites they get.

Overall, today was a very fun experience, and Grayson educated us about insects and mosquitos. In order to create a product that does not allow the insects to resist treatment, one needs to understand and learn a considerable amount of information about the specific insect and its tendencies. After the tour, we went to lunch with Mr. Self and Dr. Mc, who came and visited us.

After a scrumptious meal, we headed back to HQ to polish our research, tired but ready for beginning the final presentation tomorrow!

Today we faced our fears of public speaking – rather, going up to random strangers and talking to them about bug resistant clothing. We split up into two teams again, one team tackling REI while the other traveled to Bass Pro Shops. Adam and I went to REI, the first few minutes spent sitting in the car and trying to summon the courage to walk into the store. After walking a lap around half the store, it was time. We walked in and made a beeline for the bug repellent spray and clothing. We talked to a sales associate, who was an avid outdoorsman and admitted to using Insect Shield, the monopoly of the chemically treated insect resistant clothing. Prior to departing from HQ, I made a customer response survey that we would fill out after talking to each customer in order to keep track of our data and make sure the graphs from the Google Forms was usable. Mr. Self requested that we ask the customer if they would pay more for an organic product, and the sales associate agreed that he would, no hesitation. It was a good start to the daunting task.

We spent some more time in the stores asking customers about bug resistant clothing, and we received an overwhelmingly positive response to the potential organic product. We headed back to HQ to reconvene and organize the graphs properly. We learned about one more chemical, picaridin, which was the better alternative to deet, a harmful chemical which damages most clothing. There was a sales associate in REI who thought that chemical-free bite resistant clothing wasn’t plausible, and was also worried about cost and effectiveness. Although we do not know the cost or effectiveness, the point of our market research was assuming that it worked just as well as the chemical alternative. That said, although the machine for making the weave is expensive, it does not undergo additional chemical treatment with permethrin, essentially making Vector Textiles cheaper. Tomorrow, we are visiting Vector Textiles labs and starting to put together our final presentation. I am looking forward to gathering all of our information and research into one coherent presentation for Mr. Self!

We had a conference room booked. It was party time. Almost immediately, we figured out how to connect to the Apple TV. After, we made many calls to maternity stores and garden shops and researched further on other uses of Vector Textiles in the form of bed netting and plants. Due to a non-disclosure agreement, we are not able to share the specifics of the weave of Vector Textiles. Additionally to clothing, Vector Textiles also sells plant shields and bed netting.

We were tasked with calling local maternity and garden shops and ask about bug repellent clothing and plant armor respectively. The maternity stores did not seem interested in holding a conversation, especially since none of their customers ask for bug repellent clothing. The garden shops were more helpful, with one store even giving a substantial list of organic plant netting as well as chemically treated plant netting.

The survey for our market research got sent out after the draft was approved, and immediately, responses started flooding in. It was crazy how fast everyone responded. Cary Academy’s network contains at least 850 students and faculty, making our survey statistically relevant. Currently, we have gotten over 200 responses and will be very helpful for a better understanding of the consumer market.

In order to save money due to the expensive parking in downtown Raleigh, we went to Target and picked up Lunchables and chips, a nutritious lunch.

Today wasn’t really too eventful, although Mr. Self debriefed with us at 4 pm. He talked to us for a while about the path Vector Textiles needs to take in order to become successful. Again, due to the NDA, we cannot discuss the details of Vector Textiles business deals. To summarize our discussion with Mr. Self, he talked about the basics of marketing and how companies who sell intellectual property make money. He talked about some of his concerns for Vector Textiles as well. Overall, it was a slow but informative day.

Tomorrow we are going on another off-site day to interview customers to further our work on Wednesday.

Today we visited stores for our field research. We split up into 2 teams and ventured off to various outdoor activities stores in Cary, Raleigh, and Apex. Will & Scott and Adam & I each went to different stores and scouted out the possible competition and interviewed customers.

We talked to sales associates and some customers to get a better profile of the popularity of bug-resistant clothing and the average consumer profile. All of the people we talked to were very friendly and seemed interested in an all-organic product. Will and Scott interviewed an avid outdoorsman who seemed eager for a non-chemical product, since the chemical used to treat clothes, permethrin, is a toxin to the human body and sometimes a skin irritant. We also learned that if someone wanted to treat their own clothing by spraying permethrin, it would only last 6 washes, not to mention the toxic fumes that could damage the body.

All the stores carried bug spray, and with our research yesterday, we were able to better interpret the data we collected at stores. I realized that going to the store and talking in real life was much more effective than sending out online surveys, even though the technology is considered more effective. For example, we did not even realize there were any bug resistant clothing at Bass Pro Shops until we stepped into the store.

The main takeaway from our field research was the fact that there were no organic products that are effective in the bug resistant clothing market. Even though there were some organic sprays, they had to be reapplied more often. Chemically treated clothing only lasted 70 washes, hence, there was no permanent solution for bug resistant clothing.

Working with a team is much more efficient as well, and being able to split up and cover twice as many stores were the most effective method in order to finish up our work.

Mr. Self checked in with us at the end of the day and we made a brief presentation to explain or data and provide a quick analysis of our conclusions. He was very impressed with the work we were able to get done in one day. Cary Academy prepared us well for giving effective presentations and expressing our thoughts.

Overall, it was a tiring but rewarding day. Mr. Self wants us to further study bug resistant netting for beds and plants. I am glad we were able to fulfill his expectations and more. Excited for Day 3!

As I arrived at the parking deck at 8:39 am, I thought to myself, “Man, I hate downtown Raleigh”. The previous night, I texted one of my colleagues, Adam Cervenka, and asked him to walk into HQ Raleigh with me. I was nervous as we walked through the doors but soon realized that it was pointless. HQ Raleigh was a communal workspace with a chill vibe, the perfect recipe for discovery, innovation, collaboration, and excellence.

There were many amazing amenities in HQ Raleigh, including free coffee and water, pretzels, fruit (peaches and bananas), a latte machine, and even a beer tap.

It was a cool main lobby with many rooms for various companies to have a home-base. I was blown away by the aesthetically pleasing design and coffee-shop, professional feel.

Scott Matton, another colleague, revealed later that there was free parking right around the corner, which made the day even better. Downtown Raleigh wasn’t so bad and the internship wasn’t as daunting as I thought.

Our workspace was a generous gift from a company called R!OT, a company geared towards helping start-ups by providing them with 12 weeks of free space and resources with no equity. It was the perfect space to encourage collaboration.

Our boss and potential CEO of Vector Textiles, Mark Self, gave us the task of proving why Vector Textiles is important and who they will provide for as an end goal. He arrived at HQ Raleigh with his dog and gave us a brief overview of his plan for us. We kicked off Day 1 by making a game plan and researching. Mr. Self introduced us to a widely known instant messaging platform called Slack, and throughout the day we made sure to run various things by Mr. Self before putting it into action.

Our first task was to research what was already in the market. As we soon figured out, there was nothing in the market of insect repellent clothing that was all-natural and organic, like the special weave that Vector Textiles had created. Almost all fitted insect resistant clothing underwent chemical treatment with permethrin, an FDA-approved chemical. Upon further research, we found that although seemingly harmless, permethrin was toxic to cats, fish, and can negatively affect pregnancy. When ingested by humans, the chemical acts as a neurotoxin and a number of other harms. Additionally, it does not evaporate easily, posing harm to the environment, as permethrin is harmful to fish.

We then decided to create surveys to gather statistically relevant data to get a better feel of the target consumer and consumer market availability. We ran it by Mr. Self, and with a few tweaks, we sent it to Dr. Mc to hopefully send out to the CA community, a network with a plethora of people. With that, it was time for a lunch break.

Our self-declared team, Team Mawan (Mark, Amy, Will, Adam, Nevett), ventured to Cookout for a team lunch. We followed accordingly to the schedule we had previously drawn up, listing “lunch” from 12:00 – 1:00 pm.

We headed back to HQ Raleigh to get back to work. After filling Mr. Self in with loads of information we had collected, including stores to visit, the harms of permethrin, and general consumer profiles, he instructed us to construct a compelling powerpoint that contained an organized version of our research. We worked all the way up until 4:30 pm, the end of our workday.

Originally, Mr. Self was going to drop by the office at 4:00 pm, but since we had kept up plenty of good communication and clearness in the Slack group chat, he deemed it unnecessary. Tomorrow we are planning on going off-site to sniff out the competition from outdoor activity stores. It was a very positive experience, and there was plenty of organization and self-motivation, with Adam even creating a well thought out lunch plan for the remaining days.

I learned that even without shadowing a boss, we were capable of self-directing the project, a level of maturity and compassion needed to succeed in any real-life job. Specifically, working with Vector Textiles is a unique experience, since it is a start-up company. Team Mawan gets to experience first-hand the extensive research and data analysis needed to successfully launch a product. I hope that I will continue to learn the gist of marketing and how to effectively communicate and present, just like in a real job. I am looking forward to finishing the presentation and presenting our findings, and am very excited for Day 2!