“Mama, mit meinem Praktikumsplatz haette es mich nicht besser treffen koennen!”

That is what I told my mother right after my very first week at Indigo as a new intern here. My name is Julia Wilk, I am from Germany, and it means something like, “There would have been no better place for a work experience.” I am enjoying my work experience at Indigo Clothing – I really am!

Unfortunately the customers, who call us every day, have no real idea how much fun people here are! The atmosphere is always balanced. Nobody is sitting in her/his own room. Sure everyone has their own desk but the desks are all placed in the middle of the room. Everyone can look at each other, which allows us to have a conversation together the whole day long. As you can imagine these circumstances make the atmosphere really lively!

Well, there is one thing that I have to say that I don’t like – Indigo Clothing with it’s massive choice of garments makes me want to spend money: I want to buy new clothes! My personal favourite brand that we supply is ‘Bella’, and my favourite garment is the Tube Top by Skinnifit.

I’m looking forward to the following weeks!

My name is Catherine and I am currently in my second year studying Printed Textiles at Loughborough University. When I initially decided to do a placement year after my second year I was a little sceptical as to whether it would be a good idea. However, after my day’s placement at Indigo Clothing I believe it is far more beneficial to have an insight into the working world.

Joining the Indigo team for the day has been a hugely enjoyable experience. Having the opportunity to design and print my own t shirt was an exciting experience, I planned to use a fashion drawing from one of my Fashion projects this year but ended up printing a phrase I love (as well as my nickname on the front!) instead as I really liked the red vintage cut tee and the gold vinyl lettering looked really effective.

Dealing with clients emails and generating quotes from numerous clients enabled me to have a deeper knowledge of the more mathematical side of printed clothing. The placement has given me a taste of the working world and I relished the experience.

Indigo is looking for a new Client Services Team Member. If you are interested in joining our little family, please see our jobs page for more info and how to apply.

They say your schooldays are the best days of your lives. That may or not be true – I’m still a bit traumatized by the memory of double Physics first thing on a Monday morning, and I can’t say I miss having the length of my skirt measured with a ruler on a daily basis. However, there’s lots to be said for spending all day with your mates, reading Jane Eyre (my favourite), and being served up sausage, chips and beans on a Friday.

It’s the time of year to start thinking about commemorating these “salad days”*, and what better way to do this than having some Leavers Hoodies made. Your school crest, the names of classmates – make the Class of 2010 something to remember!

There’s a great range of style and colours available on our site, ranging from the Gildan Blend Hooded Sweat in Orange to the Continental Women’s Pullover Hoodie in Electric Blue. The artwork department is also on hand to help you develop your designs into full printed glory.

*Shakespeare, William, Anthony and Cleopatra – one of my own A-level texts, not a personal favourite except for the bit with snake.

Posterous

Here at Indigo, the customer services team are often delighted to get testimonials and thank you messages from happy clients via email. The challenge was how could we quickly publish the testimonial to our website, twitter (@indigo) and Facebook (Indigo FB page)? Also, how could the customer services team member do this themself without asking the IT department to do it for them?

Our solution was Posterous – a blogging platform that can auto-post emails sent to it. Now, once someone gets a testimonial they just have to send it on to post@posterous.com and it will publish to our site and wherever else we need it to go! Sweet!

The new semester is here…….woohoo I hear you cry! So why not be the cool cat on campus by customising your very own slick t-shirt or hoodie for you and your new mates in your corridor. The trend at the moment is pretty much anything goes.

We’ve seen the British public sporting huge life like animals over their tight tees and the Americans going for vivid slogans such as: “Real girls eat meat” which was recently sported by Jessica Simpson (hmmmmmmm!). If you’re not a huge meat fan why not opt for the whole being part of a team approach by broadcasting the title and your name on the back of ya top……Uni, where everyone knows your name! The rules are, there are no rules so get customising !

P.S If you want to be liked on campus, please please do not use the words “chickie” and “lickie”! These two words are most uncool and will keep you in looserville throughout the rest of ya educational life!!

Post by Meeha:

“Oh Meeha, keep in mind we’re very casual and jeans will do just fine.”

Just the words any intern/workshadowing student wants to hear when trying to venture into the world of the working kind. I didn’t really know what to expect  when I got accepted to do a workshadow with Jo and the gang at Indigo Clothing. All I can say is, quickest six hours of my life, apart from the really, really , REALLY fast six hours of sleep that preceded the working day.

I was taken by Jo, my mentor for the day to the warmest, most comfortable studio room-office ever. T-shirts hanging from a clothing line, of course, they customise shirts, among other things. Was introduced Eleni, who works with Jo, and got right down to work, being explained bits and bobs along the way.  After a  few additions and multiplications, sending back quotes to potential customers  it was time for lunch. Guess what, they feed you too!! Well, only if you’re interning I guess . Yummy chicken sandwich baguette from a bar across the road, you will truly be missed. When we got back from lunch I was introduced to the Blog on which these few words will be put up, I’m assuming. FUN! Although I’m not sure if this particular post will be half as popular or fun to read as any of Kate’s. Wow can that woman write or what?

As I write this, I’m getting my very own t-shirt printed.  It took me nearly half an hour to think up what I wanted to have printed on my shirt. I think it is quite near perfection.  Almost.

You readers should be so lucky to get a day to intern with Indigo Clothing, I did, so BOOYA!! I’m thinking of throwing in an evil chuckle somewhere, yes totally should.

*RUBS HANDS TOGETHER AND CHUCKLES*

And because I have a train to catch back to Loughborough University, I must stop writing this post from this big city computer, in this big city work place, in the big city.

This sheep in the big city and alien to fast walking, tube-taking, hustling and bustling must go back to the Village that is Loughborough.  Adios!

Meeha's new t-shirt!

Us girls in the office do tend to bore the men with fake tan, gossip and frocks, so to keep the testosterone balance, we have our alpha male of the office, Stephan! He is often quoted as saying the things he does/eats/wears/watches are ‘real man sh*t’!

I couldn’t help notice a  fellow holidaymaker at Gatwick airport sporting a grey micro fleece jacket with REAL MEN embroidery detail. I might have to get one made up for the REAL MAN of our office.

It is a bank holiday weekend here in England which means we get Monday off work (yay!) and that last week was a manic rush to get orders out on time for the inevitable short deadline jobs that seem more common at this time of year.

On the staff front we have had some changes, with Opal Witney, our Australian client services team member, heading off on her travels to the south of France, whilst Eleni Panayis, has joined Indigo again now her university summer holidays have kicked in. We also welcome her twin sister, Tys, who joins us also for the summer. Tys is no stranger to Indigo, having modelled for the first WordPress t-shirt photoshoot, but her real passion is her singing career (myspace.com/tyspanayis) which I am sure we’ll hear more of on the blog over the next few weeks! Jo Myronidis is now general manger and leads the team into our new financial year come the 1st July.

On the web side, Tom Loudon has joined our sister company Indigo Two Ltd and, in between developing email and website campaigns for Lombard and British Airways, he has taken over the mantle from Matt Attlee (who has gone on to join the BBC) and has made some neat updates to the Indigo Clothing website. For example there are now sexy new quote calculators on the individual product pages that generate the prices in real-time. Our web traffic continues to build nicely and a Page Rank increase to 6, two weeks ago, was a nice surprise.

As for clients we have done work for some big names including Sony Europe, Ordnance Survey, Liverpool Victoria (LVE), Tower Hamlets NHS Trust and many more, whilst maintaining our relationship with Johnson and Johnson, JJB, WordPress and the Southbank Centre. We have also had some great orders from our smaller customers and we’ll feature some of the on the blog over the coming weeks as case studies.

There is plenty going on behind the scenes here that I can’t make public yet but I will say, despite the negative economic outlook, the office is positively buzzing with orders, is full of large piles of sweets and shortbread biscuits and smiley happy people!

A pat on the back for Opal in the customer service team email inbox!

—–Original Message—–
Sent: 06 March 2008 15:31
To: Opal Witney
Subject: New Client Reply – [INDIGO !32923]: Some queries

Thanks so much, Opal. I’ll look forward to receiving the swatches/colour charts, and then we can make a firm decision and place our order next week.
You really are so very efficient and I do appreciate it. Some companies are terrible about replying to e mails, or dealing with queries effectively.
I’m so impressed by your promptness and helpfulness. I’d like to send you a copy of the first book in the series to say thank you – where shall I send it? Could you remind me of your company’s address and I’ll send it c/o there. We have a fan base growing in Australia, although the series isn’t yet available there. So it’ll be great to have another Aussie Stonewylder!
Kit Berry (Stonewylde)

It been exactly six months since we moved into our new offices on Provost Street, so I thought it was time for a bit of an update!

As you can see from the photo of the client services area, we have filled the place with a lot of stuff – I think there are desks under the files somewhere! Each desk now has dual screen monitors (19 and 17 inch) to make it easy to cut and paste between emails and order documents, and the Cisco VOIP phones have drastically cut our outgoing phone bills. On the wall is our ‘washing-line’ which has samples of some of our latest print jobs and Opal, Jo, Steph and Lizzie are being cooled by the great Hunter fans we talked about last time.

We have had no major dramas to report, our neighbours, Roome, are lovely and we have tonnes of storage space compared to Bucklersbury House, our previous office. We like going out in nearby Hoxton Square, making Bluu, Cru and the Real Greek our regular haunts for a drink, business lunches or birthday dinner.

Hi, I’m Lizi and I have recently joined the Client Services Team here at Indigo Clothing.

I am fresh out of university this summer and after a festival or three I succumbed to the reality that I do in fact have to work for a living. With that in mind I worked as an in house recruiter for a consultancy company as well as working for Xfm radio station. I’m known for my gig-going and dressing room crashing amongst my friends, I love live music and I’m always at gigs.

Indigo Clothing is a fun and friendly workplace where I have been trained up by the finest ‘Alpha Male’ in all the land. Steph and everyone else has been a great help and made me feel part of the team.

Indigo are in need of another Client Services Team Member to help us through the busy Spring and Summer 2008 seasons. If you are a fun, dynamic person, who would get on well with us, and our clients, please visit our jobs section on the site, read the job description and apply as directed. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who fail at the first hurdle by not reading the simple instructions! No agencies please.

From left to right, back row: Alex, Matt, Gees, Ed, Steph; From left to right, front row: Jo and Essi

The Indigo Clothing team, set off from our Old Street office (sadly minus Opal) for our annual sales and marketing conference, on a cold December Friday evening. This year’s venue was Helsinki, capital of Finland and home country of Essi (our old client services co-ordinator, who left us this winter to go travelling in Australia and Thailand) and we left the office in a jubilant and Christmassy mood. Little did we know that dramas would start occuring within 20 minutes of leaving!

It all started when we were sitting on the Piccadilly Line, comparing silly passport photos when Matt, Indigo’s inhouse web developer, realised he had left his passport on his desk! Jo dispatched him from the train with concise travel instructions and via the miracle of the Heathrow Express, Matt managed to join us in Terminal One with just 5 minutes to spare!

However, he need not have rushed after all. Three hours later, we were still sitting on the tarmac, the plane having broken down and we finally made our way into a deserted Helsinki airport at 0230! Feeling a little worse for wear, after all the free drinks that evening, we were rudely woken up by a fire-alarm at 1000:

The next day involved a mix of meetings, sleeping, sight-seeing, eating (reindeer based products!) and drinking in some sort of order and suddenly it was over before it started, it was Sunday night and we were flying back to London, with bags stuffed full of Moomin merchandise:

Two days later, the trip seems like a distant memory, except there is a little, hippo like, teddy bear sitting on Jo’s desk, serenely looking over us…

If you, like me, dread the thought of scouring card shops for celebration cards, Christmas cards, get well soon cards, happy dog birthday cards and any others that they seem to produce these days, then this is the site for you: Moonpig.com

Being in the customisation business we are always keen to see new ideas, and this one is genius! You can create the perfect personalised card in minutes, plus they deliver in 24 hours!

The site is easy to use and provides excellent previews to make sure you don’t make any mistakes.

We always use moonpig in the office for out leaving parties, birthdays and other celebrations, as personalised items always have an impact! You can see Ed modelling his birthday card above! Shame he closed his eyes!

Post by Jo