Hanging out with Capryl

Thursday May 27th

Let's see my last email was Monday? So today is Thursday, yes Thursday. My days sometimes get confused. So well actually I think I did talk to you Tuesday. Anyways on Wednesday we were suppose to have a picnic and meet with Capryl which is our company, but unfortunately it was rainy so we just had our picnic by ourselves. It consisted of picking up food and riding a bus to the town Billy to see where were suppose to eat and rome around the town. The town is apparently supposed to be one of the prettiest towns in France, which it was. It was very old and had much history. The castle belonged to the Bourbon family, who held the throne in France up until the French Revolution and whose descendants continue to hold the thrown in present day Spain. This royal family is where the name for Bourbon whiskey comes from as well as Bourbon Street in New Orleans. After we walked around we got back on our bus and went to meet our company! We toured the facility and the manager I guess you could say explained to us their problem and what they are trying to do. (This is really neat because we get to work for a real company solving their real problems. Great experience and this is actually the first year this program has worked with a real program.) Anyway the summary of this company is that companies come to them to make their product. (These products are cakes mixes, flann, cookies, etc.) They distribute 80% of other companies products and on about 20% of Capryl's own. Capryl would like to expand their own product but do not know if they should or should just simply not try at all. That is where we come. We are trying to help them and solve their problem. By figuring out who is their target market place? Right now they distribute their own product into "specialty stores" they say. But Capryl is very amateurish. If you look at their website, it is terrible. No one knows who they are, so they in my opinion will not sell their product if they are non existent to their customers. It is neat trying to figure this out, because it is not as simple as just saying you need to redesign your boxes. Maybe they need to target their product to a completely different market than their competitors, which at first thought might be the same. So this is our project for the summer. Help Capryl out.

Today which would be Thursday we had class and then it seems like we spend every afternoon at that darn train station trying to figure out our weekend trips. It is expensive so frugality is important. We have done some grocery shopping so we try and only eat out one time a day which is for dinner. I grab a granola bar for breakfast and make a sandwich for lunch. We bought this pass for 49 euros which lets us get any train ticket we want around France half off. So really it is a good deal. Our Switzerland train ticket was 144.70 euros. Today though actually we saw a protest around Vichy! The train station I believe was on strike. So when we went to the train station to try and get our Barcelona tickets there was a huge line because their was only one "guichet". So that did not work out.

Tomorrow we will be leaving after our field trip from Clermont to go to Switzerland. The trip is 7 hours by train. It really is only that long because of the stops, but oh well. At 8:15 we will begin our canyoning adventure! I can absolutely not wait! If you look up canyoning interlaken like I told you you will see what we will be doing. It will last 4 hours. After we are not sure what we are doing? We may do a ropes course and zip line through the swiss alps or we might just walk the town. I think that we will not go wrong with anything, since it is wonderful scenery all around! We are coming back Sunday at 1.

Ta ta for now.

Au Revoir!