my advise would be to look into specific stores who's aesthetic you gravitate towards. They'll have an in house design team that oversees design of spaces, shelving systems, and visual merchandising. I know H&M were hiring a while back.

We may be interested, depending on when and how long, and your skill level, abilities, etc. If you like, send me a resume, I will review it and get back to you. We do about 200 retail stores and restaurants per year.

Hi Annymous, thanks for the idea but I'm not american and I don't really know where to look into...

AGAIN: anyone?

My old office is doing nothing but retail...give it try, but don't stay too long.

www.tricarico.com

In addition to the above post...they LOVE hiring foreigners.

Anonymous is right. Typically the architecture firm only builds the building shell while the retailer has their own in-house crew that handles the interior design - or visual merchandising. I've worked on a few of these new "lifestyle centers" which are largely driven by what the developer wants. Then the high-end retailers come in with their own interior, sometimes storefront.

I know the big retailers all have their own teams designing this stuff. Target stores has an army of people in Minneapolis doing that. Since most mall stores are owned by a larger parent company I would assume they do the same.

Good news is that doing that type of thing usually pays much better than traditional architecture firms. Bad news is that they probably aren't as open to hiring summer interns.

Thanks for all the thoughts so far.

GALAXIZ, what was it like to work/live in nj? and why would they love hiring foreigners?

"Good news is that doing that type of thing usually pays much better " haha good news indeed!

Living in northern NJ is not too bad, a very typical surburbia in USA. (lots of big box stores, malls, and not much else). I was at Wayne, which is 20 minutes outside of NYC. You do need a car to get around, and it's quite expensive too. Thank god I'm not in NJ anymore, I'm on the opposite coast now.

As for working in Tricarico...suppose you are without status issue (citizens & permanent residences), and you are not happy at the job, you can just march right into the boss's office tell him/her to f**k off and quit; but if you are on working visa, your choices are likely to be limited. If you quit at one place, you are either need to leave the country within x days or find another job immediately. The management knows that and they go out of their way to exploit you, knowing the fact that you'll most likely grin and bear it.

I know that Sephora LLC SF is hiring as well. I worked there for about a month in ther store planning and design team. but personally didn't find the job as interesting. It paid better, but only by like a couple thousands in the junior level. I found that the store planning team was not as interesting as their animations team which dealt more with signage and worked more with the products that they sold. Also, the actual creative part was only done by one lead designer. it's tough to be creative when there's a set prototype to follow. i may go back, but i think getting a more general experience before focusing into retail may be better.

MACY'S....!!!!!!

Nike and Gap/Banana Republic/Old Navy both have summer internship programs in their retail design and interior architecture groups.

I'll second that...working on the client side gets you the perks, such as you get to boss the architect(s) around, and they'll still kiss your ass. The design department in Coach is notorious for being difficult.

RPSNINO How do I look for that? Im not int the us.

Charlize:

Check out the world-wide web. I'm not sure about the Gap website. Nike is at www.nikebiz.com under job postings there's a special link somewhere for their internship program.

"world-wide web" very funny, thanks! ;)

callison.com

Wow, and they ARE hiring, thanks.

Callison has been hiring between 30-60 positions for the last two years...

It's supposedly the largest retail firm in the world with 600 employees, and clients like Gap, William Sonoma, Nordstrom, Washington Mutual, Ikea...etc. They also do international work in Dubai, Russia, Qatar, Korea, China etc.

This is a very corporate firm, but in the Pacific Northwest sense. If you are looking for a first job, I would reccomend working for them for a year or two, but don't expect to make any giant leaps up the ladder, or work on anything cutting edge. They specialize in client driven 'safe' designs, and rarely push the envelope beyond what they 'think' the client wants. However, they are excellent at what they do, and it's a great place to learn some basic skills about the profession.

Check this out too: http://www.ddimagazine.com/displayanddesignideas/reports_analysis/design100/2006/index.jsp

where are you internationally?

gap has an international division, as do many retailers

you can learn visual merchandising by working in the field, many corporate retailers will not train you in a corporate setting for visual merchandising.

i have worked on both sides of retail--field experience is best because it gives you the best perspective by being hands on--many people in corporate situations never visit nor worked in the field, this is why many ideas don't translate well when it comes to implementation, at least in my experience which is 2 decades worth of work in the industry....

Hey remonio thanks. I had already checked that website, but I was hoping to hear what people here had to say about the topic.