Emily Troiano Interns at American Vinyl and La Republica Coffee
from FSU Art BA ’19 Emily Troiano:
“One of these was an internship, an opportunity made possible by my sweet Uncle who runs two successful companies out of LA. The first is a sticker brand called American Vinyl, which sells everything from bumper stickers to decals and does most of their business through eBay and Amazon. The second is a start-up coffee company that I have had the honor to help promote through my duties with them, that one is called La Republica.
Considering that the two companies are based in California and I am still a full-time student here, I was lucky enough to do my internship remotely and still get course credit for it. The two companies branch into completely different markets which has made the experience all the more educational.
For American Vinyl, my duties mainly consist of resizing sticker listings and deleting repeat items. All of this is done on a nifty site called Sellbrite, which allows smaller companies to list and do business on larger vendor sites such as Etsy, Walmart, eBay, Amazon, etc. I have never done any behind the scenes work within companies like this before, so I have very much enjoyed seeing how it all works. I am a personal advocate of shopping small, so it has been an honor to be a part of a business much like the ones I purchase jewelry and such from on Etsy.
La Republica, on the other hand, has been geared in a whole different direction. It is the first coffee company to feature seven different types of mushrooms in its recipe, so it has appealed to my healthy diet and overall lifestyle. My job for them has been to reach out to influencers and persuade them to promote our product on their social networks. I did this by writing emails that were geared towards their specific brand, and tried to work out a deal that was both a benefit to their following and our buyers. This experience has not only taught me that influencers/bloggers are a lot busier than they appear, but often charge a fee for branded content. With that being said, I have gained a newfound respect for those people, and have realized that their posting of pictures is actually how they make their living.
Throughout the experience I was required to keep a journal of everything that I did surrounding the two companies. This meant a daily or weekly journal entry, or whenever I did something worth logging. At first I was skeptical of this, but it was oddly satisfying to look back from the start and see how many new business terms I started to incorporate into my writing.
Although my internship did not exactly correlate with my focus area, drawing, I found it incredibly fulfilling to do one. I would recommend that everyone complete an internship before graduating in or outside of their major because it truly does expose you to different job opportunities in the real world. As far as mine in particular, I don’t know if I would say that advertising is the job for me, but it has definitely been rewarding to learn the new cutting edge of it through social media platforms.”