My experience as an Export coordinator at Harvia

Time flies so fast and now my internship at Harvia is coming to an end. I would like to share my thoughts with you and reflect on my taughtful experience at the global leader of sauna and spa markets.

Let´s start from the beginning and go back to last autumn, when I was still on my exchange year in Geel, Belgium. The plan was to find an internship for the next summer in the area of sales or marketing, preferably in a globally active company. This way I would start gathering practical expertise on top of my theoretical knowledge about business in a global scale. It took a while but finally I stumbled upon a recruitment ad for a Export coordinator at Harvia and immediately applied. The whole recruitment process took less than 48h in which we had an interview and a meeting in Muurame’s office. Even though, it was my first time in the office and that my internship would start about a month after, I already felt like I was part of the team.

I started my internship at the end of February. I had some logistics knowledge from previous summer jobs but rather from the dispatch’s perspective and not from coordinating the whole entity from office. Therefore, it was pretty much a new start for me but luckily I took up the new ERP system fairly quickly, which made my job much more proficient. My days consisted of serving and handling mainly domestic orders but also exports to Sweden, Estonia and the UK for example. I had to be constantly communicating with different stakeholders from our dispatch department and shipment carriers to sales managers and production to ensure smooth customer experience.

My internship was amazing and successful from multiple perspectives. One more thing I want to put emphasis on, one thing that I realized during my internship. Many probably see Harvia only as a sauna heater manufacturer and so did I, before my internship. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Harvia also has a wide selection of spa-modules, sauna doors, infrared saunas, and many other things that you couldn’t even imagine for your exceptional sauna experience. That’s one of the many reasons why I believe Harvia has been so successful and earned the title of market leader in their industry. Finally, I want to express special thanks and my deepest gratitude to the sales and export team for making my internship worth it: Annukka Kauhanen, Minna Borelius, Lea Hevosmaa, Jana Rekonen, Nurana Atayeva and Pirkko-Liisa Haimi. I am thankful for the opportunity to work with you and all the help and support that I got throughout my internship. I could not imagine better team to have spent the summer with.

Author: Panu Laivonen