Ever wondered how our power specials go from ‘in our heads’ to ‘in the shop’?

Here at Powershop, one of our favourite parts of the week is when we create our specials. These are the ones that regularly appear in the shop and, judging from the comments we normally receive on social media, they’re one of your favourite things too!

The day typically starts off with a morning meeting to discuss current events and decide what the topic of the special is going to be. During slow news weeks we have to get creative and delve into “this day in history” or “international day of” to find something interesting.

We try to include a mix of people from different teams in the meetings to keep ideas fresh, but there are always a few familiar faces in attendance who make every special happen. Let’s meet them.

 

Peter is our words guru. Most of the puns and dad-jokes you read in our comms come from him. Once we have the special idea, Peter sets about creating the commentary to go alongside the image. At the moment, a lot of his free time is spent playing Scrabble, listening to Spotify, and re-watching Mad Men. His favourite special is probably the Killer Pineapple from 2015. We think Peter’s pretty punny.

Dan’s one of our designers. Once we’ve decided on the special theme, he sets about drawing concepts and figuring out how the special will look in the shop. Dan is currently in the process of moving house, and has been spending his free time second-hand furniture shopping and hunting for unique things to fill his new space. He’s also partial to a slice of banana cake and a coffee. Dan’s favourite special that he’s worked on was International Talk Like a Pirate Day last September.

One of our other designers, Nacho, hails from Argentina. As we’re throwing potential special ideas around, Nacho is already sketching concepts in his notebook. When he’s not teaching the office Spanish sayings, you’ll find him drawing, playing football and reading – he prefers stories with unexpected endings. His favourite special is our Fiordland kea gym special from January.

Once Peter, Nacho and Dan have finished creating the artwork and words for the special, it gets passed over to Steve, our specials guy, to add it to the shop so you can buy it.

Steve’s the one who plans when the specials will appear in the shop and manages the size and discount of each one. He’s also been known to appear in a few of our videos, including sharing his magic formula on how to get the best out of Powershop. Outside of work, you can normally find Steve on a mountain bike. He’s also partial to a game of pool or two. His favourite special was International Caps Lock Day (yes, apparently it’s a thing) back in 2014.

 

The final step is to get the special live  on our Facebook and Twitter pages, and await your reaction. Samme, our resident social media manager, takes care of this, and is usually the one who will reply to all your comments. She’s currently in the depths of house renovations and wedding planning. Her favourite special is our Fandemonium special from January this year when everywhere in NZ was having a heatwave.