28 January 2019

Monday

We participated in the MOX Parade event held outside SOTA from 25th-27th January. Prior to the event, we had done a site recce of the area last Christmas and the traffic flow was quite heavy. As it was situated in town (Dhoby Ghaut MRT), it will be a great opportunity for us to reach out to the teenagers.

Products/ Services

In addition to terrariums and terracotta pots, we have decided to introduce a new concept of Do-It-Yourself Terrarium where customers will choose their plants, decorate it from a range of colored sands available and top it up with a figurine.

This is because with many arts schools nearby (SOTA, NAFA), we feel that this approach can reach out to the design-based buyers that may want to customize their own terrariums instead of buying ready-made ones. Therefore, MOX Parade will be one of the best venues for us to test out this DIY concept.

Pricing

Terrariums are priced at our usual price of $15 each while DIY terrariums were priced at $17. The additional cost of $2 for DIY terrariums can be justifiable as it enhances customers’ experience by being able to personalize their own terrarium to their liking.

Meanwhile, we also have our sales promotion of 1 for $15, 2 for $28, and 3 for $38 to encourage customers to buy together with their friends. Our terracotta pots were also sold at 1 for $16, 2 for $30.

Promotion

MOX Parade is organised by Fleawhere, and is a platform where local artists, fashion designers and other creatives showcase their collections. It has been a regular popup market outside SOTA for several years and has been advertised on many different channels.

Near the traffic lights, signboards of moxparade were put up to inform the public of this ongoing event.

The event organizer also publicizes during the event day on its Instagram account (@fleawhere) with 15.5k followers and our DIY terrarium were featured on their Instagram Story on both Saturday and Sunday

Expenses

The rental of booth at MOX Parade is by far the most expensive among our previous events costing $320 for 3 days. However, our team feel that this high cost can be justified with its locations – being in town and its high traffic flow as it is near Dhoby Ghaut MRT and shopping malls like The Cathay and Plaza Singapura.

With the table size of 4ft by 2ft, we may not have enough space to display our terrariums and allow our customers to customize. We also do not want the customers customizing their terrariums to block the front view of our store which may affect our sales. Hence, we decided to rent an additional table at $52/3days that will be used solely to test the DIY concept.

Event

Day 1

Sales surged and reached its peak within the first two hours of operation. This is partly due to the lunch crowd, and also because it was a Friday where there are students from the nearby schools (SOTA, NAFA & SMU) and working adults from the offices nearby. We managed to sell several ready-made terrariums and terracotta pots during this peak timing.

We also successfully made our first sale for DIY Terrarium! It boost our confidence in this concept as we were initially uncertain whether customers will spend time to customize and pay higher for a terrarium.

Day 2

We noticed that there was a distinct difference between the customer group on Day 1 (Students and office staffs) and Day 2 (Families and couples). Throughout the day, there was a constant flow of traffic passing by our booths from both sides of the traffic lights.

Day 2 was also a day that have proven to us that our DIY concept is something viable. Surprisingly, our sales for DIY terrariums went very well and was even higher than the sales of our ready-made ones. The main customer group for our DIY terrariums are families where parents pay for their children to test out their creativity. Most of the children are around the age group of 5-12.

Other than children, we also had couples making a terrarium each, which attracted many onlookers to our booth.

Overall, Day 2 has shown that the DIY concept was worth venturing into.

Day 3

We set up our booth at noon and while we were setting up, we managed to make 2 quick sales, which was a great start to our day. Our sales for ready-made terrariums were much higher than our DIY terrariums, and we noticed that there were 2 distinct group of customers:

  1. Creative people that want to personalize their own terrarium. Most of them are families, where their kids will be the ones customizing.
  2. People that just want a terrarium and are not really into customizing their own one. Most of them are teenagers and adults.

Therefore, we were able to reach out to both groups of customers by offering ready-made and DIY terrariums at our booth.

Review of Mox Parade

Customer Segment

We managed to reach out to a more youthful population, with children and couples as our main customers, something that we have not explored into. It can be seen that children and teenagers are a great customer segment for us as they are willing to spend on cute ready-made terrariums or on designing their on terrarium. This customer segment is worthwhile for us to focus on in subsequent events.

DIY Concept

Our DIY terrarium concept was well liked by many, especially parents, as it gives their children a hands-on experience and opportunity to use their creativity in designing their own unique terrarium. It was also able to reach out to some teenagers that would prefer customizing than buying ready-made ones.

We will most likely continue with the DIY concept as the results of this event has been favourable to it.