My Internship Experience at Mighty Velo

My name is Elaine, a Business Studies student from Ngee Ann Polytechnic and currently an intern at Mighty Velo. I am specialising in Human Capital Management, also known as Human Resources, and have joined Mighty Velo as a HR and Marketing intern. Together with five other fellow interns from International Trade and Business, Entrepreneurship and Mass Communication, the six of us work together as a team to create marketing content to boost Mighty Velo’s reach and sales. In this blog, I will share more about what I do as a HR and Marketing intern in Mighty Velo, and the things I have learnt so far during my internship. 

Over the past three months, the interns, including myself, have been learning how to create content for social media to do digital marketing. This includes photography, videography, editing and being in front of the camera. We have also learnt how to build a bike from scratch, and also do simple customer service by replying to online customer queries. 

As a HR intern, I had a chance to research and recommend relevant government grants that may benefit Mighty Velo. I was also able to apply for the company’s internship placement for all five polytechnics in Singapore, and interview potential candidates for the next batch of interns. 

Marketing

Marketing takes up the majority of our experiences here in Mighty Velo. On the daily, we create fun captions and upload photos and videos on our social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Google Business. These content come in the form of short skits, lifestyle videos, product photos or talent photos. 

We often head out to different parts of Singapore to film and take photos, followed by editing and other post-production works in the office. One of the series that we are filming are MV Chats, which features our customers and their lifestyles.

As Mighty Velo conducts regular Facebook LIVE, the interns are in charge of the setting up of equipment, filming and transcribing. Instead of only using our phones, we use the Blackmagic live production equipment to ensure the best viewing experience. 

I am specialising in HR, hence I was not familiar with all these work at the start. However, I am starting to pick up filming, editing and being in photos. It is a long process for me and I require a lot of time and effort to learn, however I feel that it is a great experience for me to do things that I am not used to doing in school as this broadens my learning. 

Retail/Customer Service

On Saturdays, all the interns work at the retail store instead of the office to attend to walk-in customers. As we provide test rides for our bikes, Saturday is usually the busiest day of the week. While all of us interact with customers and recommend bikes to suit each customer’s needs, we learn more about the bikes and are then able to market it better. 

We also have access to Mighty Velo’s Facebook inbox, and we reply to customers’ queries whenever possible. Test rides are also requested through messages and we are able to schedule appointments for them. 

Bike Building

Although building bikes is not part of what we do every day, all of us had the opportunity to learn how to build a bike from scratch. Once we know more about the components of the bikes, we are able to understand the bikes more and know how to market it better. We are also able to reply to customer queries that may be more technical. 

HR

All six of us have had the chance to research for relevant government grants for areas such as logistics. I mainly research grants related to payroll, employment and productivity solutions. If there are grants that we can tap on, I will then apply for the grant through government portals and agencies such as Business Grants Portal. I also submit any subsidy claim that the company has, such as internship and National Service claims.  

We have been looking for interns for the next batch, hence I have applied for internship placement for the company for all five polytechnics. To ensure we get interns for the next round, I went into each polytechnic’s website and applied for us to be one of the internship companies to receive interns for the next batch. During the applications, I crafted the job descriptions for all the internship roles we are applying for. Following that, I arranged for potential candidates’ interviews and sat in the interviews to assess each candidate. 

Takeaways

Before I joined Mighty Velo, I had no idea that there were so many foldable bike brands. In fact, I had no knowledge of foldable bikes at all. In Mighty Velo, we carry brands such as Birdy, Iruka, IFMove, Reach and CarryMe and CarryAll. I am given the opportunity to learn more about these brands and at the same time, know more about bikes in general.

I had imagined Mighty Velo to be a small bike shop that only does retail. However when I joined as an intern, I have come to find out that Mighty Velo has a 1,000 square-feet experience store, a 5,000 square-feet distribution warehouse and a 2,000 square-feet office and studio. We now have 17 staff, including the interns. 

More than just a bicycle shop

Mighty Velo is more than just a bike shop. We are a bike company who puts a lot of effort into marketing, and we are the official distributor of Pacific Cycles’ bicycles in South-East Asia.  We offer 17 customized frame colours for Birdy Gen 3 model, four customized frame colours for the Birdy New Classic model and ten frame colours for the CarryMe.