A Chat With February's Profile, Margaret Moraskie, vice president of e-commerce, Boston Proper

CS: What are the best things about working at Boston Proper?
MM: It's fun to work for a growing brand — constantly improving sales, a pretty open philosophy. As long as you're true to the brand, they're very encouraging of ideas and opportunity. I started as an assistant buyer for stores and now I'm VP of e-commerce. So I think when you have initiative and you work with other folks — all the departments here work together well — that's what's great about it.

It's nice to be part of a winning team. And that even means when things aren't great, everybody kind of bands together and figures out how to make it so. To the point where we answer phones when it's our busiest time. We all kind of help each other pitch in.

CS: Is the fourth quarter your busiest time of the year?
MM: No, we're actually on sort of an opposite calendar. Spring is our busiest time of the year. Fourth quarter is busy for us, but January, with the launch of our spring season. We're spring-heavy. Fortunately right now we don't have to rely on Christmas to bring in 30 percent of the annual revenue. It doesn't happen that way.

Because she's shopping for herself, and we really excel in the spring season at that sort of evocative, creative … our customers have told us that they love to be transported and taken away. And they look at the catalog almost as sort of a magazine. There's this escapist quality to it. So that's a lot of fun, too — looking at the pictures.

CS: Is the seasonality of the business a problem for Boston Proper?
MM: No, it used to be. We've steadily and consistently improved the selling in the fall season to balance it out. It still is more balanced to spring, but we've definitely brought the level of performance in the fall season up.