An Impression of Red Velvet and the Sweet Shoppe A Fashionable and Tasty Learning Organization MSM 620 Janna Foland Portfolio Project

A Little About Red Velvet Red Velvet was a company founded by Elsie Flanningan, Rachel Denbow, and Emma Chapman almost 10 years ago and has grown into a vintage heaven, cute and tasty cuisine hot spot, and an internationally renown fashion label. Elsie and Emma consented to doing this interview about how being a learning organization has assisted them in growing. Located in lovely Springfield, Missouri

What is a learning organization? Peter Senge defines a learning organization as “organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.” Why is Red Velvet a learning organization? The way they conduct business and conceptualize new ventures truly inspires many people to step out into the world learn something new and pursue a dream.

The Leaders Red Velvet Online Shop and your Home Store have both grown, what type of learning has contributed to that growth? (Mentor’s, Formal education, Informal Education) We have been doing Red Velvet for over 10 years now so a lot of what we have learned in business and artistically we have learned from experience, trial and error. Also Emma is currently working on her MBA and we've read a lot of books on specific things that we wanted to learn more about at the time (like Photoshop, basic book keeping,etc.)

The Perspective What type of learning has helped with the store’s success the international label, the Boutique and the Sweet Shoppe? Learning to market our brand online, via blogs and other online resources, has been a great thing for us. We've always been learn better ways to do this, and hopefully will continue to grow in our knowledge as the field changes and new social networks are born or die out.

The Team Would you say that your team learns together in order to grow the business in new directions? Yeah, we sometimes learn things together since Red Velvet is very much a team effort. :) But we also all have our own strengths and skills that we bring to the table and we learn/grow in these areas on our own too.

Learning environment for everyone You offer various E-courses in online shop (Blog Love, Modern Patchwork, Photo E-journals, and Retro Beauty School), how would you say that developing and offering these courses have contributed to your business? Well, obviously we do make some money from them so it's a positive thing in that respect. (Every likes to be able to pay rent :) but also it has enabled us to connect with our readers and customers on a more personal level as we get to be involved in their own personal growth and development. That's a really great thing, and we are proud we get to have a positive impact on others like this.

Future options I know you had an intern lately that contributed education to the team and assisted in the success of the spring fashion line. What subject area do you plan to learn more about in terms of future plans for your business, either through more interns or other types of education? We are currently in the process of interviewing more interns for the fall line (coming this September), we hope this can be an ongoing thing with the fashion part of our business as it’s been a really great experience for everyone so far. We are always looking for ways to improve and grow our business, it takes on lots of forms so it's hard to say what the future holds really.

The Sweet Shoppe This idea of gaining additional education also goes for all the success with the Sweet Shoppe is there any form of education that was helpful in developing this section of the business or future learning for future endeavors? Emma doesn't have any formal education in baking, only in business but she also took some courses offered from our local health department that helped her learn more about safe food handling practices and what to expect when she gets her food inspections and all that.

Conclusion: how this will help with the growth of shewearscrazywell Learned about how leaders can let the business grow with them as they and the team learn. Learning and changing go hand in hand. Don’t let the direction you start in limit where you go. The environment you create affects how others perceive your business. If you value learning and creativity, so will the people who shop from you. The only limits are the ones you impress upon yourself.

Resources Images provided by Red Velvet. Store : http://www.shopredvelvet.com/collections/e-course Elsie’s Blog: http://www.abeautifulmess.typepad.com/ Emma’s Blog: http://redvelvetgirls.typepad.com/emma/ My Blog: http://shewearscrazywell.blogspot.com/2011/04/red-velvet- interview-peek-at-learning.html My Store: http://www.etsy.com/shop/shewearscrazywell?ref=si_shop Reference List: Smith, M. K. (2001) 'The learning organization', the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/biblio/learning-organization.htm.