Awful company to work at - Sales Associate Southpole Employee Review

great company really enjoyed my time there

none issues, great company, great owners

If you want all the work you can handle, in an old school environment with outdated technology, this is the place to be.

Ive heard stories of how Southpole was great when business was good and how well the employees were compensated. Unfortunately, those times are long gone with a CEO who is more interested in being treated like a king rather than actually changing the trajectory of the company. What was once a great titan in the fashion industry that had 6 floors filled with employees from top to down, has now not even more than 20 employees which at one point 40% of the staff was filled with interns. What was insane is that interns should be there to learn and do intern level work, but due to people not willing to join a sinking ship, full time employee level work was pushed to interns. You have interns straight from Korea who can barely speak or write english, trying to communicate with lead buyers and sellers from different companies and joining sales meetings. Because this company was so massive back in the day, everybody's job function was singular. due to downsizing from a force of 600 to 15 all these old processes stayed the same, but the functions an individual exponentially grew. The work is tedious and old fashioned, and the data you have to manipulate on the daily is pretty much the same. The work culture is absolutely horrific in this company. From the top down, the people up top have no desire to procure and retain talent. They legitimately ask people to write reviews online to boost the ratings for this company (I and multiple individuals were approached by senior management to write the reviews.) If don't do what they say, you will be on their bad side and will be out of the inner circle. They expect you to kiss the very ground that they walk on, just because they give you a salary(which they will do their absolute best to lower it). Don't get scammed by these people, they will lube you up and have their way with you. Once they are done, they will discard you like trash and wont compensate you for your efforts. The sales associate who eloquently wrote multiple paragraphs surmised everything that is wrong about this company. Although I cannot personally attest to the incidents described, as I was not an employee during this time, this fits right into the work culture of this company and sounds exactly in line with what would happen in this company. As for my own story, I am personally able to attest the scumminess of the upper level managers. There was a document that was lying around that contained all the salaries of all the employees as well as their salary bump and bonuses that they were to receive next year. That year, management told everybody in the company that due to not being able to hit the expected revenue, that the company was not handing out bonuses to mid/upper level employees while lower level employees would receive 2 week bonuses. That would roughly come out to less than 15k in bonuses for your entry level employees. HOWEVER, on this document certain employees in the inner circle of a certain executive received MASSIVE raises. Individuals in this little group received huge increases in pay, from anywhere 30~40% increases, while managers that were not part of this group did not even receive the customary 5%. Not only that, the CEO took home 500k in bonuses. What kind of gross practice is that? Although talent level varies across departments, I know that every single individual in that company works their behinds off, but again just because you're not in the good graces of certain people, you will be pushed out soon enough. All in all, it would not be half as bad if people in positions of power really had half the capabilities that they estimate themselves to be at.