My Semester with Anthropologie (URBN)

There was a lot of consideration that went into planning my current semester. At the time, I was in my third internship and I would be heading into last semester, so I knew that this academic year I didn’t want to clutter my plate with obligations of only ceremonial value. I did a lot of thinking about where I wanted to work and what I wanted to do after graduation. I knew I was looking to end up in marketing/communications/content strategy, but as a job that could be done in virtually any industry, I wanted to build a relationship with a company that nurtured my creative interests. So, midsummer, not long after I had just begun my summer internship, I began my applications to intern with Anthropologie in the coming semester.

Anthropologie isn’t simply a woman’s fashion, beauty, and home retailer but it is a lifestyle brand. Our shopper at Anthropologie is a “creative-minded woman” who also has a “sense of discovery” and a passion for “adventure”, qualities all of which could be immediately perceived from any of the brand’s touchpoints. Anthro is under the URBN holding group, which is home to other brands including Urban Outfitters and Free People. I had applied to multiple positions throughout the entire company and the process can be a bit daunting, from video questionnaires to different projects and then interviews, but overall the result was rewarding for me. I had invested a lot of time in these applications, rather than applying to a ton I was less passionate about.

In the company, I serve the role of a Buying Intern in the Home Department (Furniture). I know has an Advertising/Business student this can be a bit of a departure of what I have studied and my previous professional experience. I chose to accept a buying role, as an intern, because I came to find that my responsibilities seemed to be a combination of roles/skills I had experience with before but they were just being leveraged in a new and unlikely setting for me. For example, the way we monitor how certain products in our inventory performed wasn’t all that different from the way I measured how national ad units performed at NBCUniversal. My conversations with the Concept team all referenced ideas and practices I have learned in my Art Direction courses.

From this side of the fence, I found that this was such an important experience for me as I learned how we can leverage our skills as creatives without being a designer or photographer, all while growing my analytical and strategical hard skills. Most importantly, this position allowed me to forge a relationship with a company that can be known to have a difficult recruiting process. Since being in the company, the talent team has been wonderful in helping me plan my full-time career goals, across all of the company’s (URBN) brands. While I have loved my time in Buying, the talent team has been incredibly helpful as a pivot back to a marketing/content/comms based role and maybe I’ll be able to spend my formative entry-level years with the company.