Pros
The people you work with are literally the only positive part of the experience! Although it is good to use as a stepping stone to the next level, most people use it to progress to assistant merch/assistant buyer before moving on to a better paid role elsewhere within a year.
Cons
Where do I start... Laura Ashley is a very poorly run company, management have been in the same roles for years and years and because of this they are very stuck in their ways and are so out of touch with reality. Any challenge to the way you do things gets instantly shot down, time and time again there has been extremely talented new staff with buckets of fantastic ideas but within a couple of months the constant negative feedback puts out the spark and you become a robot just doing admin work no matter what level you are. Sometimes I felt like there was actually no point in me even turning up with how little I was using my brain! Pointless meetings which should either only last half an hour, or should even just be an email often lasted all day. All in all it is a very draining experience! And that's before I get to the very low pay, no sick pay, no Christmas party, grim head office building and no benefits whatsoever!! My advice to anyone looking at Laura Ashley as a step up is don't do it, hold out a little bit longer for somewhere that might actually care about you and your career!!
