What a Costa Rica furniture co-op taught her about business
This business administration student spent eight months working on pricing systems and event planning for furniture company BoConcept.
Joining a company in the middle of a leadership transition can leave employees uncertain about direction. But for third-year business administration student Fiorella Cordero, it became an opportunity to create a hands-on experience.
Cordero, 21, spent eight months on a co-op with BoConcept, an international furniture company known for its modern Danish designs. The team had recently welcomed new ownership and Cordero helped ease this transition during her time working in the company’s office in Costa Rica. She played a direct role in planning launch events, inventorying existing stock and creating an updated pricing system for the new management.
“It was a great experience to [oversee] a cultural change in an organization,” Cordero, 21, told Northeastern Global News.
Instead of spending her days in a cubicle, Cordero took inventory of the company’s ceramic-topped coffee tables and sectional sofas at the warehouse and met with the team at BoConcept’s retail location in Escazú (a suburb of San Jose, Costa Rica) to set weekly sales goals and strategize on how they could meet those numbers.
When she was in the office, she collaborated with the finance team about pricing changes or worked with marketing to go over budgets and advertising campaigns with the likes of Google Ads and Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
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Cordero also organized events, including a rollout of the company’s latest furniture collection and a launch party to introduce the new ownership.
The planning did not always go smoothly, she said. The team ended up throwing a party in the company warehouse because they couldn’t rent another event space. Cordero helped transform the industrial building into something more aesthetic, draping fabric samples to create a makeshift backdrop. She converted the parking lot into a sales floor by arranging BoConcept’s sleek midcentury style chairs, tables and knick-knacks like ribbed glass vases and aluminum sculptures of leaves and coral, into an impromptu outdoor display.
“It came out better than we thought it would,” she said.
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Chief Financial Officer Jorge Portuguez, who worked closely with Cordero, said her presence was a “critical factor” in implementing changes during the transition period.
According to Portuguez, Cordero helped the new owners learn the software BoConcept uses to buy their furniture products and how the sales and report modules work. She also executed a review of the existing inventory and proposed a new pricing strategy for the Costa Rican franchise.
“Fiorella is a very engaged person, with a strong commitment and is very passionate about any task that she is performing,” Portuguez said. “We were very happy to have [her] on our team.”
Cordero’s original plan was to spend the summer interning for BoConcept. But extending the experience into a longer co-op was beneficial, she said. It took her over a month just to learn the company’s products and how their retail space functioned. Having more time there allowed her to apply this knowledge to her work.
The extension also meant she didn’t just focus on marketing, as originally intended, but also expanded into work in financing and store management.
Her event planning was especially impactful. The challenge of making the warehouse an acceptable party space reignited a long-forgotten passion for interior design, something she realized she may want to incorporate into a future career.
“This was a great opportunity for me to mix a hobby with my work,” she said.
