Cheryl Entry #12

On Monday and Tuesday, our team visited OCBC Centre. Since Ram and I had went down the day before, he had managed to find an area with cheaper parking after picking us up with all the supplies. Armed with only one trolley and four sets of feeble arms, transportation was once again tedious and draining. We entered the recreational centre after 10am and we took a long time to setup considering that vendors who came later than us managed to finish setting up before us - this is clearly an area that we need to improve on.

On Day 1, sales were disappointing. We were surrounded by three food vendors selling desserts like ice cream, cakes, and tidbits and one vendor selling socks and no-tie shoelaces directly to our right. One thing I noticed was that when customers looked at our booth, their gazes were instantly redirected to the colourful socks and shoelaces directly next to us. While some expressed curiosity and positive comments about our products, sales ultimately went to the socks vendor. Those who came down to this area were also attracted to the cakes and ice creams that they could have after their main meals. At the end of the whole day, sales were minimal. Our team had a lengthy discussion following the event as to how we could improve on the second day.

Thankfully, sales on the second day was much better than the first. Although it still doesn't come close to our sales in the White Sands event, the four of us learned a lot regarding the importance of pitching and positioning. We also gained some soft skills like changing our approaches depending on the different kinds of customers and how to reassure customers who had bad experiences with succulents in the past. Overall, sales for the OCBC event was still disappointing, but it was a necessary experience we had to go through. On the brighter side, we managed to talk to a new vendor on the second day who suggested to us other types of banks who are receptive to vendors like us. Citibank and DBS were mentioned, and he even shared with us his past experience of setting up a booth at Singtel and getting completely zero sales at the end of the day. He cautioned us that every vendor wants to head towards the HQs of companies which makes it a very competitive market, and advised us to try out branches in other areas to really identify our target group.

This was an insight to me because I was voting for the OCBC branch at Raffles because of the traffic in that area, without giving the Tampines branch much of a chance. As I was demoralized from the first day of sales, I wondered if corporate was really the right sector we should venture into considering our poor sales. Listening to him on the second day made me realize that my way of thinking is very narrow and that I'm too hasty in coming to conclusions sometimes. These are areas which I will work on and I'm glad I found these gaps through this event.