Amy Shimoda

Amy Shimoda Speeds Down the Career Highway As Boutique Specialist For Vespa Motorscooters

"This is my dream job," declares Amy Shimoda, FIDM Visual Communications grad and the lucky woman who gets to travel around the U.S. setting up merchandise boutiques for Vespa, the super-hip motorscooters recently re-launched in the U.S. "It's what I've always wanted to do!" Affirms the Alabama born-and-raised 22-year-old, "This is what I was telling people I wanted to do before I even came to FIDM!"

"And," she continues, because of her preparation during and after attending FIDM, "when it came, I was ready for it!"

Taking a Vespa showroom launch from empty shell to fully-functioning boutique fully stocked with Vespa motorscooters and accessories is Amy's prime assignment. "Along with our Vespa, we're also selling a lifestyle," she asserts. "We came up with a boutique environment, a place that will sell Vespas, but will sell all of our other merchandise."

Amy has almost total responsibility for the look of the boutiques. "It's great! I get to go in and work from the ground up, from a skeleton," she says in her slight southern drawl. "I walk in when they just have the bare fixtures. I get to pick and choose how I want to set up the store—I get a lot of freedom on that end. I look at the layout, and decide what my color story's going to be. Then I decide how I want it to look. I put together the entire store."

Although her current job title is "Boutique Specialist" with Vespa's California-based parent company, Piaggio USA, Inc., Amy's title merely hints at all the areas in which she has a hand. "I'm starting to work more along the lines of product development, and I also work closely with the marketing department," she reports. "I train sales staff at each boutique that I visit, put together fixture packages and merchandise allocations for them, and go in and do all of my product placement."

Besides all the autonomy with which she's been entrusted at such a young age, Amy says, "I love the travel" —her territory includes the East Coast and the south from Maine to Texas, which allows for frequent visits with family. "I love the fact that I get to meet new people," she continues. "And I get to bring the finished product back to my company. I think that's probably one of the most rewarding parts of my job."

The road to her dream job was not a direct one for Amy. After getting her first taste of visual merchandising in high school working for a small children's store where she was put in charge of window displays, she entered the University of Alabama, where she explored several different majors: Interior Design, Communications, and Fashion & Retail Merchandising, but just couldn't find the right fit. Finally she took matters into her own hands. "I got on the internet, started surfing around, trying to find a school that offered visuals, but wouldn't limit me only to retail," she remembers. "When I found Visual Communications at FIDM, I realized this was where I needed to be."

During her time at FIDM, Amy worked part-time for Pottery Barn, helping open their Beverly Hills location, then briefly joined their visuals team. After graduation, she held a number of different jobs: office manager at an architectural design firm; assisting a photographer who taught her photo retouching; and working with a visual designer on the freelance end of the business, of which she says, "It was a great experience." But, she concluded, "I'm a person who needs a little more structure, so I definitely wanted to be involved in a corporate setting."

That setting came by way of FIDM's Career Development & Placement Center, which actually gave the Vespa job lead to her roommate at the time, who got the job and turned it down, but recommended Amy for it. Fully armed with her FIDM-honed jobhunting skills, Amy sent her resume in within an hour of obtaining the lead. She interviewed with Piaggio USA and was hired the next day. "FIDM did a good job as far as preparing me, helping me with my resume."

In fact, her FIDM training was chock-full of valuable knowledge. "Every class I took I learned something from, but I really didn't think I was going to be implementing a lot of it. When I was sitting in the classes I was thinking, 'OK, when am I ever going to draft something?' Now that I'm out in the field I have to draft fixtures all the time! The most insignificant things that I thought I would never use, I'm using all the time."

Getting a job after FIDM proved to be no problem. "You can get into the industry right away when you graduate," says Amy. Getting a job in which she could see herself "for the next ten or twenty years," however, was a different story. "That was something that didn't come as quickly to me," she observes. "But because of the experience I received in my other jobs, I was ready for it when it came.

"It did take me a while to figure out exactly what I was looking for," she notes, "but every job that I had beforehand really played a key role in me getting the job that I got. Everything that I learned before—I definitely needed it! I wouldn't have traded it for anything."
Is Amy Shimoda exceptional? She certainly is. But pair an exceptional student like Amy with FIDM's educational and career development resources and unleash her against today's job market, and watch out, world! This is what dream careers are made of!

Please Note: The information contained herein was confirmed at the time of original publication