Lilia Subkhankulova

I am currently an employee at Bott Ltd in Bude. I started as a Product Designer in 2014 after
moving to Cornwall from Cambridge. My duties initially included creating and maintaining
product drawings in Autodesk, product design, testing and launch.
After I returned from a short maternity leave in 2015, my duties shifted to developing and
maintaining online retail tools for in‐vehicle equipment. Closely working with multiple Bott
departments and subcontractors to deliver various versions of the online configurator across
different markets and ranges on time and within budget (UK, Germany, France, Australia,
internal quoting tool designed for Bott sales agents and trade partners). This often involved
pricing the products to ensure their competitiveness while maintaining healthy margins. I
also routinely ran reports on new vehicles, popular van models and product sales reports
and fed the findings back to the Sales team to keep the online offer competitive, up‐to‐date
and relevant to our online customers. This involved analysing and understanding the market,
advanced Excel and presentation skills, learning and understanding Bott products and
competition, communication and interpersonal skills, and a degree of business insight.
After returning from maternity leave for the second time in 2018, my duties changed again.
This time I joined a newly created in‐house Digital team in a similar capacity, maintaining and
developing online configurators further. However, this time I delved more into digital
testing, writing and maintaining website tests as well as deepening my product information
knowledge, closely working with the parent company in Germany to unify product data and
online database and improving data consistency.

Delivering orders to major retail clients such a Superdry and Harrods in a timely manner, foreseeing potential design problems, choosing suitable materials, processes and finishes is all part of the job of my role at Garmet. No two days are the same. One day I would be putting together exercise equipment, the next - wiring up an intercom assembly for our NHS clean-room installation or finding a way of securing a fringe curtain to a metal ring to "make it look like a shower", because it needs to go into M&S window display tomorrow morning. I also provide production support, create BOMs, engineering drawings, CNC punch programs and CAD-models, research suitable fixings and tools as well as making an occasional round of tea.

I joined Solve 3D as Project Manager on 04/07/12 and in my 4 months there I learnt more about 3D programming and model making than at any other job.

I had to learn Pro-E in order to design packaging to for Asda, Sainsburys, Hotel Chocolat etc. I had to master Cinema 4D software to create photo-realistic rendering of the finished product for customer's approval.

My first design job gave me an opportunity to work closely with Production, Sales, suppliers and customers creating bespoke plastic enclosures to customer requirements and within budget. My other duties included prototype building and testing, CNC machining, producing and maintaining drawings library, creating datasheets and assembly instructions.

My duites included answering phonecalls, processing invoices and expenses, reconciling journals, writing out cheques, processing online payments as well as general office duties.