I worked for my parents’ company, Keystone Ridge Designs, this past summer and it was a huge eye-opening experience. Yes, it is one scenario to live with your family, but it is another to work with them in the office all day long. You really learn to appreciate what they do to support a family and their employees as well. KRD has excelled in terms of profitability, customer relationships, and building their brand. This allowed for attention to be focused onto building a new business.
This summer I worked with the marketing team as we developed a new company, START Creative Finishings. The start-up process consisted of discussing target markets, showcasing our products, and creating a consistent vision across all platforms or areas of the new business. We wanted to make sure to develop a uniform plan so that everyone would be understanding of the overall outlook for the future. START Creative Finishings is technically under Keystone Ridge Designs, but to the public it is a completely different company. We created a SWOT competitive strengths grid, intern training guide, marketing plan, condensed business plan, and potential customers list as some of our “documentable works.”
My specific task was prioritizing the “look” of the company and how customers would perceive the business. I did this by curating social media posts, organizing all the photos, and designing the website. Efficiently creating layouts to showcase pictures and include important information for the customers helped me to better understand the sales process. The marketing team taught me how it was necessary to design the website and social media geared to the specific audience of customers. Without them, the company would not be possible.
As much as I love only working with photography and social media design alone, my mom made sure to give me opportunities to make sales calls, working with the in-house customer relationship management (CRM) system, and learning aspects outside of my specialties. Learning how to categorize START customers, schedule follow-up communication, file accurate personal information, and follow steps in a specific order were tasks that were uncomfortable for me. With updating contact information, it was not unusual to receive bounce-back emails when the mass marketing mail was sent out per holiday, promotion, or sales reminder. It was my job to research or simply call the customer to update their new email, increasing the chances of future business inquires. As tedious as the process could be, it was satisfying to be able to help the company uphold the strong relationships with their customers. Overall the summer was a great experience to better understand sales and a real startup business.
https://www.startcreativefinishings.com/
BoweryJE22
I also did a lot of work with some companies to help their “look”. Branding and maintaining consistency across different client facing media is important!
That’s actually really interesting to hear that KRD created a sub-company to focus on a more specialized product/service and allowed you to be on the ground floor opportunity. Aside from marketing responsibilities, it’s great that you got to see the sales aspect of the new business by participating and making calls to clients, along with managing their profiles in a CRM system.