Comp Shopping

Yesterday I went to do some market research. I went to Charlotte Olympia, Georgina Goodman, Rupert Sanderson, Liberty and Dover Street Market.

At first I was a bit scared to ask questions to the sales staff, but found that everyone was really helpful and willing to answer my questions. When I first went in I decided to see how I was treated as a customer, and found that in everywhere except Dover Street Market, everyone was really friendly and approachable. Especially so in Georgina Goodman, where the assistant was really interested in helping me which was nice!

Trying now to type up and document my 'findings' but not quite sure how to lay everything out and type it up...

I feel a bit like I don't quite know what i'm achieving and don't have another tutorial til Nov 9th so am just carrying on, possibly procrastinating a little bit too much.

Also I'm a bit concerned that I haven't come up with a way to research my consumer, as I feel standing in the street and asking questionnaires, which was my first plan, isn't really going to work.

Everything

Went to two really good exhibitions at the weekend, the first, the Museum of Everything in Chalk Farm, which was a collection of things owned by Peter Blake. Most of the things were weird things from old Victorian Circus, like pictures of people in freak shows and old fortune telling machines! The second was underground in the Old Vic Tunnels near Waterloo station and it was modern art. The best thing was probably the huge arch shaped film projection of kaleidoscopic flames reflected on water. Hard to capture on a camera.

Monday morning I went to the book binders, to get my Research Plan bound, and I get to collect it tomorrow, I'm so excited to see what it looks like! Then in the afternoon I had my first tutorial with Sarah which was good. Discussed my research plan, and now need to focus on the business side of the concept, as opposed to the inspirational side, which I have been mainly concentrating on.

Went to Northampton yesterday to visit Springline, and the Shoe Museum. Was good to go and visit Springline, and got to choose a last which I am really pleased with! Also the Shoe Museum, was really good! It was actually better than I thought it was going to be! Saw some nice details that could be interesting to utilise in sampling! My favourite things were the elephant shoes!

Lineapelle

Got back from Lineapelle on wednesday night and was exhausted!

Was an interesting trip and it being my second time going, I felt a little more confident in approaching people and requesting samples. Saw quite a lot of horrible things and not a huge amount of nice things, but I guess at least in using the process of elimination you get to know what you don't like, which can only be a good thing!

Highlights:

- Interesting rope/espadrille style randing
- Carved wooden sole and wedge units, utilising different coloured foam layers
- Gold ski hooks and eyelets
- Amazing knitted leather
- Lambskins from lambs that have only died naturally
- Nice rope and striped cotton trims
- Macramé and raffia knotting


Some of my samples:




I requested quite a lot of samples to be sent to me but i'll have to wait to see whether they actually send me any or not!

First Week of Final Year

Last week was the first week back at uni. I found that after a year of no formal education, my attention span seemed to have diminished somewhat! I'm now feeling a little overwhelmed with the workload and am planning a system to divide the work into manageable, bitesize pieces. Yum yum... Keeping a blog detailing the development of my final major project, I hope, will be a good way of monitoring the progress and any hiccups along the way.

Hopefully I will keep upto date with the posts, and intend to post at least once a week. I also think it would be good to get my friends to do their own blogs so we can see each others thought processes.

I think the first thing to do is to make a big long list of all the things I need to do!