I am Lavinia Diana Ciofică, aspiring entrepreneur; founder of Velina Femme, a Romanian-based, Italian-inspired women’s fashion e-commerce brand focused on accessible luxury and boutique-style experiences. I connected with my Host Entrepreneur, Laura Amatulli, to gain hands-on exposure to real fashion retail operations and customer engagement. I discovered Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs while researching EU opportunities to strengthen my entrepreneurial skills and decided to participate to bridge the gap between digital-first branding and physical boutique expertise. My goal was to deepen my understanding of product curation, storytelling, and customer relationships while refining my own business model through practical learning and mentorship.
During my stay, I actively supported boutique operations, observed customer interactions, and participated in seasonal planning and product launches. Together with my Host, I worked on brand audits, content creation sessions, influencer outreach, and micro-campaign development. I contributed to visual storytelling, newsletter concepts, and social media materials, helped implement engagement tracking tools, and joined supplier and logistics discussions. Our relationship was highly collaborative: Laura shared her retail expertise while encouraging me to test digital strategies, making the exchange both practical and mutually enriching.
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I gained a complete view of fashion retail, from sourcing to customer experience, and learned how to translate in-store personalization into e-commerce strategies. I strengthened my skills in branding, campaign execution, pricing logic, and influencer marketing. The exchange also expanded my professional network and opened perspectives for future collaborations. My Host benefited from fresh digital insights and structured marketing approaches, while I left with a clearer roadmap for scaling Velina Femme and building a sustainable, emotionally driven fashion brand.
EYE transformed my vision into action — blending boutique wisdom with digital innovation gave me the confidence and tools to grow my brand with purpose.