Guest Post: My Work Experience at TruffleShuffle By Henry

Hi guys, my name is Henry Vanderhoest and I have just finished a week of work experience at Truffle Shuffle.

For each separate day I had various tasks and jobs to do in different departments that the team had planned for me to do in order for me to get a good understanding of how the business works and what each individual working for Truffle Shuffle does to help it be as successful as possible.

In this blog post I will be talking to you through the daily things I got up to during my week experience.

Monday

When I arrived for my first day at Truffle Shuffle, I was welcomed my Pat and was introduced to the whole team. I was told for my first day I will be helping out in the warehouse. I was explained how the warehouse operates and how it is set out in order for products to be collected and send as soon as possible. Pat told me that Monday is the busiest day of the week, as there is no one in the office during the weekend, so all orders from Friday evening to Monday morning are ready to be collected from the shelves. My job was simply to pick up each separate sheet of orders and see what product had been ordered and then locate it using the individual location code that is on each order.

So, for most of the morning and part of the afternoon I was collecting all the products that have been ordered and piled them up, ready to be delivered to the customers.

Whilst I was doing that, there had been deliveries coming in with products that needed re-stocking. When they arrived, Ron opened the boxes of deliveries and sorted them out in to piles of the different t-shirts and accessories and then in to piles of their various sizes.

They were then all counted to double check that there weren’t more or less of the products that Truffle Shuffle ordered, so if there was a mix up of the amount then it was easy to adjust it on the system so there wouldn’t be any problems with numbers in case a customer tried to order a t-shirt and it said there was one left but instead there wasn’t one.

This showed me the importance of the warehouse department, in order for it to run smoothly and so the customers are happy.

Once I had finished my job of collecting the orders that had been made during the course of the weekend, I was then given various sheets of the location of where the products that had been delivered to us had to be. I then went about restocking the different t-shirts, sunglasses, key rings, lunchbox tins, ect away in the correct location.

Tuesday

Today my task was to go on the Truffle Shuffle website and think of any ways in which I thought it could be improved. I was told to write a report on my suggestions for improving the website. An example of one of my suggestions was to add a view all button to the website, so that customers don’t have to change page to view all the products and instead just be on one page.

Wednesday

Today I was upstairs with Pat, Tracey and Iain. My task was to come up with some new product ideas related to films, TV shows, bands and games that I watched when I was younger that could be considered ‘retro’.

I was told to come up with 10 different properties and for each property come up with three different designs. These designs could be to do with the logo, characters or a specific theme tune. I spend the whole morning coming up with my different designs, thinking carefully of what to include.

Once I had finished, I then went in to the board room and presented my ideas to a group of the Truffle Shuffle team.

I went through one by one explaining my different ideas, explaining what TV show, band film or games I had thought of along with what I thought should go on the t-shirt and also explaining what colour I though the t-shirt could be. For most of the ideas there was input of what they thought could be added or improved.

This was a great experience for me because it really made me feel like I was part of the team, which for most of the work experiences I have done its not usually like that at all. The team were very supportive and showed a lot of enthusiasm to my ideas, which made me feel very happy.

For the rest of the day, I was flicking through different magazines looking for recent press feature that had Truffle Shuffle products in them. I then cut them out with the title of the magazine and arranged them ready to be laminated.

Once they were laminated, I cut them out carefully and stuck them on the wall upstairs along with other press features that were already stuck up.

Whilst doing this I read one of the articles about how Pat had the inspiration to start up Truffle Shuffle after a holiday in America where he purchased a t-shirt with the boy from the Goonies doing the Truffle Shuffle.

It was really amazing to read how the business started from a few t-shirt being sold on eBay to a really successful and well known company that ships its products  all around the world.

Thursday

Today I was working with Lee, TruffleShuffle's photographer. Our job was to take some pictures of some new products that will be going on the website. We set up the photography room with the different lighting ready for the shoot. I then went in to the warehouse and collected the various products that needed collecting for the photo shoot. We then went in to the photography room and started with our shoot, making sure we had a photo of the front of each product and the back, or if it was a bag then a photo of what it looks like inside it.

Once we had finished our photo shoot, I was set a task to do my own photo shoot using my iPhone camera of a number of sunglasses and bags.

After that I helped Amy out with opening up the returned parcels and sorting the pieces of paper in to two different piles, one for exchange and the other for refund.

I then went back in to the warehouse and helped unbox the new stock that had been delivered that day. Once I had checked that there was the correct amount of each item, I then placed the products in the specific location that they should be.

Jack and I then had to collect some of the restock items that were put away on Thursday due to an issue with the labeling.

Friday

On Friday morning I put up some more of the laminated press features in the downstairs office alongside other ones.

My final task of the week was the write up this blog post, to explain the tasks that I had done for each day of my work experience.

I have truly enjoyed my weeks work experience at TruffleShuffle. The work experience program that I had was really good in allowing me to see the different dynamics of how the company runs, whilst learning new skills that would be used on a daily basis at TruffleShuffle.

I would like to say thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to have an amazing week’s work experience at TruffleShuffle. I felt extremely welcome by all the staff and how very friendly they were.

I hope you enjoyed my blog.

Henry Vanderhoest