« Hannah's iPod | Main | No worries »

February 10, 2006

The Brand

My senior year of college The Brand recruited at Miami for their entry-level merchant (some retailers come them "buyers") position. At that time, the late '90s, the Brand only recruited at four schools: Duke, Virginia, Michigan, and of course, the "motherland" as one recruiter called it, Miami. (They moved on to Ivy League schools and small liberal arts colleges in California after that.)

They had an Open Night upstairs at First Run where interested seniors could come meet the recruiters, get information about the company and sign-up for interview times. They showed us a video - a black and white filled mostly with shirtless guys cavorting on a beach as Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" played in the background. The next day they had several rounds of interviews on campus, and I was only one of two students who made it to the third round of interviews held the next month at the Home Office. I drove up to Columbus on a Thursday afternoon and met kids from the other schools and we stayed in the downtown Hyatt, overlooking the Capitol (and the building where I would ultimately work my first job out of college, for the Ohio House of Reps). The following day the gave us a tour around the city before bussing us over to the Home Office where we were interviewed by dozens of merchants and higher-ups. I was called back to the Home Office one more time after that, before I was eventually cut a week or two before graduation.

Because I was banking on this job - because I was certain down to my core that this is where I would work - I didn't send out a single résumé or set up a single other interview the entire second semester of my senior year. So by the time I was ready to graduate, I was jobless and clueless. I ended up moving to Columbus anyway, since my roommate Dana already had a job lined up there (which she went after since I was 99.9 percent sure I would be going to Columbus to work for the Brand). So I spent my summer going to the pool and hanging out with my brother and interviewing at all sorts of different places, before I finally found that job with the Ohio House. After I'd been there for about two months I got a phone call from one of the Brand recruiters I'd met at that Open Night in Oxford eight or nine months earlier. She said they had a open position that she thought I would be perfect for, and would I please consider coming in for an interview. The rest, as they say, is history. My first day at the Brand was the Monday after Christmas in 1998 and I worked there until four years ago this month.

It wasn't until about a year ago that I could actually set foot in one of their stores again. Every time I passed one, my heart would race and I would feel shaky and sad. The Brand's environment is difficult to explain, it was filled with secrets and mystery and until the end, when things got bad and I felt like my only option was to walk away, I was immensely proud to work there. They bill it as a Lifestyle and it becomes one - I was surrounded by my peers and I wore flip flops every day and played with clothes and words and read magazines and went on trips to places like Santa Monica, Key West and South by Southwest. My friend Sara went on photo shoots in New York and San Francisco and she got to adjust models' pants and had to remember to bring back 100 pairs of underwear. Once we moved to the new campus, there was a pool table in the graphic design building, where my table/desk was, and all the guys had tournaments and we had a magazine and book library where you could read up on surfing or skate boarding or tennis. Each morning Sara and I would go to the "barn," (where the cafeteria and gym that you could join for $2/week, were housed), to get a peanut butter smoothie or a coffee. It was magic a lot of the time, but we also worked hard and it wasn't until I felt betrayed that I finally had to just walk away from it. I don't know too many people who are still working there, the campus and employee count has grown considerably since I left, and I wonder if it still feels like a secret club, like family, now that there are so many members.

Leaving that job was like breaking up with a lover, and it took a long time for my heart to heal. Hindsight is a wonderful gift, however, because now I can look back on those years and see that they were detours on the road that led me here. And I'm grateful for all of it.

Posted by hannah at 12:00 PM