Evie's Story

For my work experience week I had the chance to work at ScotlandShop and see how they produce all the amazing tartans and find out more about their customers all over the world. Over the week I was there, I spent time in all departments learning how the business works....quite a lot goes on! I helped Kaye out in the packing and dispatch department which is very busy at this time of year and I did a mixture of jobs.

For example I cut out swatches for customers who wanted to see the colours before buying a big piece of fabric, and then I printed labels with the name of the tartan to stick on them. While I was working with Kaye I did a picklist that is a list that comes through and you have to go around the warehouse finding products and packing up people's orders and getting them ready to be sent away. Some need gift boxes and tissue paper and each member of staff has a little card to include to say they packed the parcel. One afternoon I helped Hannah from the stock team cut out tartan fabric so it could be made into ties. Throughout the week I have found my favourite tartan and that's the MacGregor Modern. Anna the owner of the company is happy as that is her family tartan! I like the MacGregor tartan because I think it looks really nice with the green and red contrasting together.

I also spent time in the marketing and social media department and added icons to the product pages to highlight things like "made in Scotland" and care instructions. Ellen is working on a project with local businesses in the West End of Edinburgh so I made a spreadsheet with lots of information on each company. Everyone has 2 screens and this made it easy to look at the website and type into the spreadsheet at the same time. My first time using spreadsheets too! I helped Emily allocate barcodes for the Edinburgh shop as they were having problems with products not coming up on their till. I then made an online poll so the staff could decide what fun activities they would like to do. I also helped Amy by writing up social media posts for their Instagram page. Most importantly I discovered my family tartan is the Allison Modern and Ancient Tartan and I read up and found out a little bit about my clan. The chief of the clan is William St John Somerville.