Bittersweet in Hong Kong--Amanda Ritter

Ten days have started my journey in Hong Kong. Having never traveled across seas before, this internship has already made such an impact on me and has become an experience that I will never forget.

My first day of work at Li & Fung was not the best. I became lost within 15 minutes from my hotel. After finally getting off at the MTR station, I found the LF Sourcing building with no problem. The staff was fairly friendly with tours of the company building, introductions, and my boss took me out to lunch. After lunch, work became sour. I stayed 2 hours later than my scheduled time on my first day. This was not a huge problem but the material I was working with was difficult because I am not familiar with looking through thousands of data of e-commerce on Excel spreadsheets to create additional spreadsheets of specific data.  The rest of the week, I spent my time at work researching the branch I work with and continuing with Excel spreadsheets. I hope that my boss will allow me to do other fashion related things soon. On a positive note, there were a few things about work that I thoroughly enjoyed. At Li & Fung, I work in the trading branch under the KS Stream, which stands for Kohl’s Sourcing.  We have different showrooms where Li & Fung designs and manufactures the products and buyers from Kohl’s come to select new products for their store. I hope to be asked to help decorate the showrooms in the future.

My favorite part of my first week was on Wednesday and Thursday. My boss sent me to a retail convention called Retail Asia Expo located at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. There are no words to describe how awesome this trip was. I acted as a retailer from Li & Fung and walked around different booths to gain knowledge on what services/products could potentially benefit Li & Fung. I was also able to sit in on seminars and listen to people talk about their products from either a technology or sustainable point of view. My favorite seminar was on virtual retailing where you can try on clothes in the store with a 3D mirror. I would love to see this develop in the US.

For the remainder of my 6 weeks in Hong Kong, I hope to see myself develop and truly dive into the Hong Kong culture and with Li & Fung.

One of the booths at the Retail Asia Expo. The display was beautiful and focused on being sustainable with recycled materials for mannequins. 

This image was displayed in a seminar at the Retail Convention. It is a touch screen Kiosk where you can pick your item of choice, put into your online basket, scan a code and purchase it on your I-pad or I-phone device.

Amanda Ritter
Li & Fung