Warne Spotlights: Leilani Smith – Marketing Assistant
Growing up in Oregon most of her adult life, Leilani Smith has always been interested in anything creative and seeing projects from start to finish. She graduated with an Associate’s Degree at Brigham Young University Idaho and loves spending time with her loving husband of eight years, two boys, and her five-year-old German Shepherd at home or at the park. She also enjoys watching movies/tv shows with her family, capturing and editing photos, reading, baking, cooking, listening to podcasts, and running.
Leilani began working for Warne eleven years ago as a receptionist. Answering phone calls, emails, and creating product orders when Warne had about thirty-five employees, she was getting in the groove of things.She grew interested in the meetings about Warne’s product catalogs at the time when an outsourced company was developing them, so she decided to start attending the design meetings. The meetings inspired her to create her own version of the product catalog, but with little knowledge about any design software, she didn’t know how to create her ideas.
With this in mind, she downloaded Adobe and experimented. She watched multiple tutorials on YouTube and practiced with the tools until she created her owndesigns. After showingthem tothe previous VP of Warne, those designs would eventually turn her passion in the creative field into her position as Marketing Assistant.
“The firearms industry is so much fun. The people are just the best people to work with and being in that industry just makes it exciting todowork around that.”
As the Marketing Assistant, Leilani creates most of the graphic designs forWarne such as the product catalog, trade show booth walls,flyers, pop-ups, posters, product labels, sales materials, andother design projects. She also manages sponsored shooters by helping create yearly contracts, managing product orders, match donations,giveaways, and keeping in touch with shooters on the events they will be attending for social media purposes. While she does have a lot on her plate, she is always ready to help other customers and co-workersas well.She enjoys working for a company that continues to grow and gives her the freedom and opportunity to express her ideas thatshe has for Warne.
“One of the reasons I enjoy my job so much is because I love creating things. I love watching other people on YouTube or other co-workers working on projects. It’s fun to see the process from start to finish.”