2. Introduction Pringoo.com is an e-commerce portal allowing users to create, share and sell unique designed products. With a unique marketing strategy it’s India’s largest online collection of customizable digital images and unmatched personalization tools to empower you to create apparel, mugs, teddybears and more. The portal has been listed among top 25 e-commerce portal in Business World 2009 and featured in India Today as one of the most popular online store for tees, etc. in 2009 among other companies like Inkfruit, Tantra Tees & Fluke Design.
4. Introduction (contd.) The company founder Mr. Jai Kumar had approached SIMC-UG, SIMC-PG & SID for 1 internship position for Creative Content, Web Development & Social Media. Around 70 students came for the interview regarding the internship. I was finally shortlisted for the same. The opportunity was forwarded to all SIMC-UG students by Ms.ShyamaDutta (ex-Head, SIMC-UG)
5. Job Responsibility as an Intern Writing design stories (min 15 designs or max 30 designs per month). 5 periodic posts on blog every month. And some occasional website content. Being active on facebook, twitter, myspace, designbyhumans, Threadless and tshirt forums to build designer and customer community at TeeZen. Must engage them on these social media space. PR content (min once in a month) 1 newsletter every week. Reporting to Hadapsar (Pune) office once a week. (mandatory). Period of Work- Aug’09 to Oct’09.
6. TeeZen Pringoo was expanding for another ecomm. Portal titled www.teezen.com Key TG for TeeZen were users from USA and Europe (along with global audience). New business model was established, other than Pringoo. A lot of writing work was required, from mailers, to the entire content for TeeZen, to PR content on social media. Teezen is positioned for professional designers and buyers (who would buy t-shirts with user based designs imprinted on them)
7. Methodology Adopted Studied the parent business model for TeeZen from the US based www.threadless.com , www.shirt.woot.com . Went through their entire database of users and content on their website. Every t-design design had to be listed with a short story (named as Fables by me). The idea is to build stories around T-Shirts, such that even if the users don’t buy the tee, they still talk about the tee. (read: PR for Teezen)
8. Methodology Adopted (contd.) Implement Co-Tweet, a business tool to use Twitter for Social Media. Post across 20 forums regularly. Harness Twitter, Facebook and Digg/MySpace. Write 30 creative stories/week for the designs submitted or that are online on TeeZen. (a real test of imagination) Visualize the User Interface. Suggest changes - Business Development.
19. Fables “Sample” for Girls Tee Freedom Fighter (girls Tee) The Daunting Task/Fearless Girl In the village of Avalon, under the full moon light, the villagers while sleeping could hear of a deranged voice. Some thought of it as a deranged voice. Some thought of it as a crying man, a werewolf, a vampire, but not a human entity. It was only when the villagers dozed off, that the hustle in the woods can be heard of. The soothsayer of the village had already warned of a “Rumble in the Bronx” (not Jackie Chan). To many people, it seemed a lone warrior in the form of a phantom, cause he would hurt no one. So one fine day, young Emily took the daunting task of finding the ONE. She took a dim lantern and a cross (symbolizing faith). A whirlwind passed by and she fainted. A month has been passed since, no strange voices are heard in the village. The only thing that remains is the broken lantern and a tattoo on Emily’s forearm of a distinguished VIKING. For Whom: Who don’t leak in their pants. Recommended: To people who can differentiate between Ken & Ryu, from the Street Fighter (aka FEARLESS).
23. Practice Had to work after college hours. The most STRICT deadline I ever had to follow. Had to sit with in house designer in office to sync fables with the t-shirt designs. The once-in-a-week meetings were with my boss, who would select, analyse and be critical about my work. Had to expand my vocab and humor quotient for the stories/fables. Wrote more than 100 mailers.
24. Limitations The work that was assigned to me was to be earlier assigned to at least 2 people. As this was a new business, my boss sufficed this by saying. For PR content and Social Media, had to wake up late nights for posting such that the comments/posts seemed to look organic as TG was from USA and UK. Had to orient myself as a Caucasian in terms of thinking and implementing. Tough to dabble up with college work at that time with one deadline being the semester exams and other being the site going in beta testing. The work flow was inorganic. Was underpaid, until I got to know of the industry standards.
25. Learning Value User Interface Development SEO SEM SMO Web Content Development Understanding E-commerce models Deliver under strict deadlines Online Public Relations relevance. Effective usage of Social Media
