Vantaggi
Nice co-workers (depending on which department you are in); there's a good amount of focus on "giving back" to the community and being globally aware and environmentally friendly; and a reasonable work/life balance in that most people get to go home after 8 hours (not the usual 12 hours of slavery that a lot of fashion companies feel entitled to demand).
Svantaggi
Logic, efficiency and integrity hold very little sway here, so if those things are important to you, run, don't walk, away from this company. Decisions made by management are "feeling" based (in other words, whims), not merit or evidence based, so there's a lot of internal chaos. The company uses a lot of words like "good karma" and "positive energy." Make no mistake - these are used to market the brand's "feel good" identity, and do NOT accurately reflect company culture. Inconsistency runs rampant. Here's a good example. They run an event during which they invite women whose children have cancer to make their own inspirational charm necklaces. At one such event, a woman hoped to have a particular charm that we had run out of. She asked if one could be mailed to her, but management decided it was too much trouble, and said no, she'd have to content herself with what was left in stock at the event. TOO MUCH TROUBLE TO MAIL A TINY LITTLE CHARM TO A WOMAN WHOSE CHILD WAS TERMINALLY ILL. Also, while the company was founded in 1991, they only started offering health insurance to their employees over the past YEAR. (Prior to that, I guess if you had cancer, you'd have to heal yourself with all the "positive energy" they are so fond of discussing....) This should provide a pretty good indication of how arbitrary and meaningless even the happy buzzwords really are. It depends on the day and the mood at the time. Most people in lower management positions here have no idea how to actually do their jobs, OR they are hampered in doing them by upper management's whims. Professional expertise is considered irrelevant. And due to the company's small size, there is very little room for growth. Raises and bonuses are stingy at best, while the owners jet off to exotic vacation destinations every couple of months. There's very high turnover here for a reason. It's a hot mess.
