Last week we looked at a company called Destination Maternity that has done really well become expectant mothers are often big spenders. Guess what–once they have the baby they keep spending. This is good news for Kids II, which is an Atlanta, GA based company that has “been inventing and reinventing baby toys and gear for over 40 years.” Even though they’ve been around for a while, their continued innovation has made them “one of the world’s fastest growing baby product companies.”
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
analyst,
customer service,
design,
engineering,
Georgia,
graphic design,
human resources,
industrial design,
information technology,
Internships,
marketing,
packaging,
product development,
product management,
toys
I’ve been married nearly 9 months now. Slowly more and more people are asking, “When are you going to have kids?” Getting a puppy deflected a little bit of attention, but it’s only going to gain in intensity. If we do eventually give into the pressure, we’ll face a time in our lives that makes preparing for a puppy seem like nothing. That’s why it should be no surprise that the expecting parent market is absolutely huge. In fact, Destination Maternity Corporation, which is based in Philadelphia, PA, does $500 million in annual sales as “the world’s leading maternity apparel retailer.” Yes, a single company (albeit with quite a few brands) can generate half a billion dollars in revenue selling clothes for pregnant women.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
analyst,
apparel,
buyer,
design,
e-commerce,
engineering,
fashion,
industrial design,
information technology,
Internships,
inventory control,
marketing,
merchandising,
nationwide,
operations,
Pennsylvania,
product development,
public relations,
retail,
software development,
technical support,
web development
On my last day of vacation I got blasted in the face with a volleyball. It didn’t break my sunglasses, but it really hurt. My nose is still sore, but it only left a tiny red mark across the bridge of my nose. I wouldn’t have minded a black eye, but I know some people care a bit more about how their faces look. They’re more likely than I am to purchase products from Benefit Cosmetics, a company that got its start when twin sisters moved to San Francisco, CA and opened a beauty boutique. One of their first products, Benetint, was developed to help an exotic dancer “enhance her nipples.” That’s certainly one of the more interesting stories I’ve heard about how a company got its start.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
beauty,
California,
design,
industrial design,
Internships,
merchandising,
paid,
planner,
retail,
supply chain
It seems that geek culture has finally become mainstream. Maybe it’s the fact that engineers are in high demand at companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google. Or maybe it’s the upsurge in popularity of sites like Reddit. Or maybe it’s shows like The Big Bang Theory. I don’t really know, but for the first time in my lifetime, it’s good to be a geek. So good, in fact, that many of the “popular” kids are now claiming geek status. Whether you’re a true geek or a poser geek, you need geek gear, and ThinkGeek is the place to go for that. They’re a Fairfax, VA based company that started with the “simple idea to create and sell stuff that would appeal to the thousands of people out there who were on the front line and in the trenches as the Internet was forged.”
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
design,
e-commerce,
engineering,
industrial design,
Internships,
Manufacturing,
marketing,
online marketing,
paid,
photography,
product development,
software development,
user experience,
Virginia,
web development
My first bike was red and had a banana seat. My second bike was a black and grey Huffy that was far cooler in the eyes of a 7 year old boy. After that I won a green “mud slinger” in a raffle. It was even cooler, but it still wasn’t a real bike because it only had one speed. I got my first real bike in 5th grade. It was a green Trek Antelope 800 with 18 speeds. I loved it and rode it all the time for the first few years I owned it. I eventually stopped riding and haven’t owned a bike since, but I still have a strong positive association with Trek. The company is based in Waterloo, WI and has been pursuing a mission to “build the best bikes in the world” since they were founded in 1976.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
analyst,
customer service,
design,
engineering,
industrial design,
Internships,
marketing,
merchandising,
paid,
retail,
sales,
sports,
supply chain,
technical support,
Wisconsin
When my wedding invitations went out, they didn’t have just regular stamps. We had special stamps made with our initials on them to give the envelopes a little extra flair. (Yes, I know it’s ridiculous.) You can get nearly anything customized these days, but postage is pretty surprising considering that the USPS is a federal agency. Whether you want your own version of postage, a t-shirt, a wall decal, or playing cards, you should consider Zazzle. They’re the company we used, and they’re a Redwood City, CA based company that allows you to “create amazing custom products with artwork you choose, and prices you’ll love.”
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
California,
customer service,
e-commerce,
engineering,
human resources,
industrial design,
Internships,
Manufacturing,
marketing,
merchandising,
online marketing,
seo,
social media,
software development,
user experience
What if I told you that the Reebok Pump, the Swiffer, and the portable ascender (it’s straight out of Batman) were all designed by the same company? You’d probably assume that there’s some giant holding company that owns Reebok, Procter and Gamble, and Atlas Devices. That’s not true. Continuum is the company in question, and they certainly don’t own any of those three companies. They’re a Boston, MA based “global innovation and design consultancy” that helps “organizations drive business innovation through the design of products, services and experiences that become part of the fabric of people’s lives.” Continuum has been at it for 30 years, and they’ve worked with some of the world’s biggest brands (PepsiCo, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, and Nestle in addition to the ones that I’ve already mentioned) to improve business outcomes through design.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
California,
design,
engineering,
industrial design,
innovation,
Internships,
Massachusetts,
paid,
product development,
software development,
strategy,
user experience,
web development
I remember when getting a new catalog in the mail made for an exciting day. My favorite catalog had to be Things You Never Knew Existed, but most of the ones I got were focused on baseball or fishing. I don’t know why I remember this, but I was always jealous of a friend who got the Eastbay catalog. It was filled with all kind of sporting goods and apparel, and for some reason I never thought to sign up to get it. While Eastbay, which is based in Wausau, WI, still has a catalog business, they’ve unsurprisingly moved a lot of what they do online. To me the coolest thing about Eastbay is their story. According to Wikipedia, they were founded in 1980 to “to meet the performance needs of local high school and college athletes within Central Wisconsin.” By 1995 they had grown big enough to go public. A few years later they were bought out by Woolworth’s, which became Foot Locker, Inc. It just shows how big a company can get even if they start by serving a small niche market.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
account management,
analyst,
apparel,
business development,
buyer,
copywriting,
customer service,
design,
e-commerce,
editing,
engineering,
footwear,
graphic design,
human resources,
industrial design,
Internships,
marketing,
merchandising,
online marketing,
paid,
planner,
quality assurance,
shoes,
software development,
sports,
web development,
Wisconsin
They say that you can’t forget how to ride a bike, but I’m giving it my best try. In elementary and early middle school I was constantly riding around town. I picked up inline skating for a year or two after that, and never got back on the bike. Now I tell people that I hate bike riding. I don’t actually hate it, but as I mentioned in my post on Niner Bikes, I love seeing people’s reactions to that statement. My twelve year old self would be disappointed that I don’t even own a bike, let alone a cool brand like a Cannondale or Specialized. Luckily for Specialized, they’ve been able to grow an impressive business without me as a customer. They’re based in Morgan Hill, CA, and from what I can gather their annual revenue is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars (but I can’t find a reliable source on that). That’s impressive considering that it all started in 1974 when founder Mike Sinyard sold his “old VW Microbus for $1,500 and used the money to fund a cycling trip through Europe.” That led to importing Italian bicycle parts into the United States, and a business was born.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
apparel,
California,
credit,
customer service,
design,
engineering,
finance,
graphic design,
industrial design,
international,
Manufacturing,
marketing,
merchandising,
post production,
product development,
production,
sales,
social media,
sports,
transportation,
video
So far our survey says that you find the internship search frustrating. Tell us more so that we can help.
When I was a kid I had this really cool electronics set that allowed me to build all kinds of devices just by connecting different wires to each other. It looked kind of like this. A friend and I even built our own radio transmitter and were able to transmit music about 20 feet to my mom’s car. It totally blew our 10-year old minds. Unfortunately, neither of us had any idea how it worked. littleBits is a New York, NY based company that has more than one-upped the electronic playground. They have developed “a growing library of pre-assembled circuits that snap together with tiny magnets.” Not only do littleBits look super cool, but they should be pretty intuitive considering that each piece has a unique electronic function. I think it would be hard to play with them and not understand how they’re working.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
blogging,
design,
education,
engineering,
industrial design,
Internships,
New York,
paid,
product development,
science,
social media,
toys,
unpaid,
video
Yesterday we looked at Niner Bikes and how they’ve carved out a really nice niche in the outdoor action sports market by building mountain bikes with bigger wheel bases. Today we’re going to look at a company that has built a much bigger business in the same market by offering products that you may not initially associate with the market. Skullcandy is a Park City, UT based company that “markets high-end headphones, earphones, hands free devices, audio backpacks, MP3 players and other audio enabled lifestyle products.” They target consumers who associate with sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, and mountain biking, so they’ve been able to build a really strong brand identity that has fueled some serious growth. Skullcandy was founded in 2003, and they made the Inc. 5000 this year with 354% three-year growth to $160.6 million in annual revenue. In fact, the growth has been so great that Skullcandy had an IPO earlier this year.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
business development,
consumer products,
design,
fashion,
industrial design,
Internships,
marketing,
music,
online marketing,
operations,
sports,
Utah
My mom is a graphic designer, so many of my childhood memories consist of me sitting in the car fighting with my sister while my mom went into the print shop to drop something off or pick something up. Today’s version of me probably has it a lot easier because leaving your kids in the car is generally frowned upon, and brick and mortar print shops are a dying breed. Today, if you have a serious print job, you’re probably going to use an online printer who can do your job and ship it to you more quickly and more cheaply than the local print shop can. We’ve already looked at one company like this, VistaPrint, and today we’re going to look at Mimeo.com. They’re located in New York, NY; Newark, NJ; Memphis, TN; and Hayward, CA, and they call themselves “the innovator of online, on-demand document printing and distribution.” They were founded in 1998, and since then they’ve been focused on developing web-based technology to make online printing even easier than walking into a print shop.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
account management,
accounting,
California,
customer service,
engineering,
finance,
industrial design,
Internships,
Logistics,
New Jersey,
New York,
operations,
printing,
quality assurance,
sales,
software development,
Tennessee,
web development
There are two ways to go about your internship search. You can push or you can be pulled. You can seek out companies that you want to be a part of, or you can wait passively for companies to blast their internship openings out to the world. The former will lead to far more rejection, but it can be well worth it. This is why I occasionally like to cover companies that don’t appear to have any internship opportunities posted. If they’re doing something fascinating, they’re worth looking at regardless of what they have posted. One of the coolest things that I’ve seen lately is the iPod Nano watch made by LunaTik. It’s simple, elegant, and totally awesome. Basically it’s a watch band that you can slip a 6th generation iPod Nano into–totally putting calculator watches, game watches, and every other kind of watch to shame. Not only can you tell the time and use it as a stopwatch (with a multitouch interface), but you can listen to music and track your runs with Nike+. If I didn’t hate wearing watches, I’d totally buy an iPod Nano just so that I could get one of these watches. Now, LunaTik is the brand that these watches come from, but it seems that the whole product line came out of a Chicago, IL based product design shop called Minimal Inc.. Both are founded by a guy named Scott Wilson, so they seem to be very closely related if not formally connected.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
design,
engineering,
Illinois,
industrial design,
innovation,
international,
Internships,
Italy,
Oregon,
product development,
project management
I often hear from readers that I don’t cover internships in their preferred location or in their area of interest. On a day to day basis that may be true, but over the past three and a half years I’ve written about a truly wide range of companies, industries, internship types, and locations. Just check out our archives to see them all. (Remember, the goal of these daily profiles isn’t just to get you to look at the company we’re featuring–it’s supposed to be a jumping off point for you to generate new ideas for your internship search.) However, the companies I cover are going to be skewed towards areas with job growth, both in terms of geography and industry. Sometimes you have to move where the action is to land a great internship and set yourself up for a great career. I find that readers get most frustrated by the plethora of available software development positions that seem completely out of reach to students who aren’t studying computer science. Today we’re going to try to relieve some of that frustration by looking at Seilevel, an Austin, TX based company that is “exclusively focused on IT Product Management services for Fortune 1000 companies.” They’re working hard to change the way that companies write software requirements. You may not know what that means right now, but you can learn. Just like a One Day, One Job reader who told me about Seilevel after landing a job there with no background in software development.
Read the full article →
Tagged as:
design,
engineering,
Illinois,
industrial design,
innovation,
international,
Internships,
Italy,
Oregon,
product development,
project management
