Internship in Small Business development for “Punctata Tailoring and Alterations Workshop”

One lucky intern in the CIEE Sustainability and Environment Program in Monteverde, Costa Rica had the opportunity to work alongside a husband and wife team in their family-run start-up tailoring and alterations business.  This lucky person is Deepti Bansal (Indiana University, Kelley School of Business) and here she describes the experience.

"For the past few weeks I interned with Elieth Coto and Humberto Brenes in their small business Taller Punctata, a local tailoring company that they established about a year ago. The business promotes sustainability through the reuse, recycling, and repairing of clothing and fabric items. The purpose of the internship was to improve the marketing strategy for Taller Punctata such that brand awareness increased in the community as many people were unaware of Taller Punctata’s offerings. Throughout the internship I focused on understanding the background, products, and values of the business as well as creating a marketing strategy such that I could help Taller Punctata implement a few different marketing tools.

In the first week I helped Elieth and Humberto create their mission, vision, and values statements such that we could all establish the direction of the business. With the foundations of the business in mind, I learned about the product offerings from Elieth and Humberto. Using this information, I created a marketing strategy and identified possible marketing tools that Taller Punctata consider and implement. The tools implemented include establishing a company website (tallerpunctata.weebly.com), generating an official email (tallerpunctata@gmail.com), applying for the business to be listed on Google Maps, designing an infograph of information to provide to the community, and creating a new store-front sign for the business. After implementing all of these items I created a means by which Elieth and Humberto can measure the effectiveness of the marketing strategy in the form of a survey. Through this internship, beyond the assigned project, I had the opportunity to learn how to sew from Elieth as well as learn a vast amount of information about Costa Rican culture. Overall, the experience taught me a lot about start-up businesses and gave me direction for what I want out of my future career."