The Operations Team experienced yet another dose of excitement last week on a visit to the Naqsh School of Art, located in the old part of Lahore.
Our main purpose in visiting the premises was to get instruction from Sher Zaman Sahab, one of the teachers at the school, on including calligraphy on the bags being designed for the BLISS Fall collection. Among the oldest instructors at the institution, he introduced us to different styles of calligraphy, and the tools used to do them. He shared some handwritten poetry in Punjabi by Baba Bulleh Shah with us, and explained its meaning to us. The trip not only proved to be an exciting adventure, but it also had a great deal of educational value.
We got a chance to tour the entire school, where Mughal miniature, sculpture, pottery and many art forms are practiced, and also had privilege of seeing the room where the main sponsor of the school, Syed Babar Ali, was born.
In addition, this last week was very important as we sent out our largest international shipment of handbags to date, for a trunk show taking place at JJWells, a boutique in Boulder, Colorado (see some amazing pictures here). This was also the first time that our brand new dust bags with the BLISS logo embossed on them were sent along. We had a ‘bag-tagging’ party at the office, where everyone got together and enjoyed putting our product tags on the bags, and our promotional postcards inside them.
Update from the Curriculum Development team:
This week was about fine tuning and streamlining. Having finally got a rough outline for our curriculum in place, we now look towards specific topics within and how they can be tweaked for greater efficiency.
This week, we’ve started developing a Needs Assessment form for the women. In this questionnaire we have included questions about family expectations, about their feelings towards the training center and about what they would like to learn. Their responses will let us know just what type of education and learning will benefit them most, and thus hit the proverbial nail on the head.
Meanwhile, if there’s one thing the Social Media team learned this week, it’s that any job (specifically one in social media!) is a balancing act, and one that must be mastered to perfection.
We knew there were multiple avenues open to us in the form of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Pinterest, Tumblr, the newsletter and more. Now we realized it was up to us to figure out how much time to give each, what kind of posts to have and at what frequency. To keep the tweets coming but not get monotonous, to post regularly on Facebook, yet not get repetitive, and to blog every week but not become dull. All the while juggling miscellaneous responsibilities like interviewing customers, sharing their profiles and posting relevant images of BLISS at work.
It was up to us, in short, to strike the perfect balance.
We imagine ourselves as tightrope walkers. Facebook & Twitter in one hand, the newsletter & blog in the other and Pinterest, Instagram, interviews & profiles perched precariously on the head while we walk the tightrope of deadlines. We may not have mastered it in a day, a week or a month, but we hope we’re on our way!