Day 2 - Learning The Brand

My first task today was to be sent to an induction meeting for all the new starters at Debenhams. I knew what the meeting would be like before I even walked in through the door; the typical health and safety, captain obvious question and answer session, followed by a thrilling slide show presentation to show you who's in charge, and who to be the most polite to.

For the most part I was right, it started with a slide show, but there was far more information to learn about the Debenhams company than I had really thought about.

The history of the Debenhams department store is traced all the way back to 1778! I was obviously aware that Debenhams is a British heritage company but had no idea that the history went quite so far back.

The company grew in size and prestige, with rich families paying a fortune to have they're children trained by the company through an apprenticeship. Right through the 1900s, the store grew as part of different groups and eventually became independent in 1997, the same year the first store opened in the Middle East. Today there are 153 stores across the UK and Ireland and 48 international stores in 17 different countries!

I learnt all this information in the first few minutes of the slide show, when I had that horrible feeling that I really should have done some more research into the company before starting my work experience.

I learned about the different sectors of the company, and what their roles are, understanding as well that they vary between clothing, home and food etc and I also gained an insight into the many different types of 'target' customer that shops at Debenhams. How each department has to cater to such a wide range of people, and each in house brand is as well meeting a specific need to a specific type of customer.

For my upcoming work in the lingerie department, I paid special attention to the different sorts of customers that would need to be targeted in this single department. My mind flew back to the typical arrangement of the Debenhams lingerie department and I hoped that it would start to make sense to me soon.

Feeling confident that I had learned a lot in a short amount of time, I was ready to leave the brief meeting, until a 'fun and light hearted' quiz was dropped on my lap. Now i really had to show that I had been paying attention.