Andrea Hein

Job Description

I teach in Visual Merchandising - a program that makes stores exciting to shop in, from window displays, to fashion styling and prop making. I also run my own holiday decorating business.

Relevant School Subjects

• Arts

Areas of Expertise

• undefined

Career Story

I started out thinking I wanted to be a high school English teacher because I knew I loved teaching. I took English Literature at McMaster University and it wasn’t until my second year that my boss at Canadian tire had asked me to help him with the visual merchandising. I had no idea what that was but once he explained it to me I was hooked! After graduating from Mac I immediately enrolled at Sheridan college for the VM program and knew I was in the right place. I fell in love with that program and quickly with the industry as I started my first VM career position as a merchandise presentation specialist at Walt Disney world in Florida. From there I’ve worked at Canadian tire head office, in charge of the Christmas department (visuals and planograms) Loblwas head office where I worked on planograms for Joe Fresh Cosmetics and started my own holiday decorating company called Andrea Hein Occasions with my favourite client being the Buffalo Bills. I taught part time at Sheridan in the VM program for years before I moved over to Conestoga college and quickly became the coordinator there. I’m still coordinator and teaching merchandising to creative students all year long as well as still operating my decorating business.