Cheryl Entry #16

16th January 2019

On the 12th, our team went down to the Katong Square Lifestyle & Vintage Market.

From our recce, we were expecting mostly tourists and couples with young children. We catered to these group by selling terracotta pots and figurines in addition to our terrariums.

Jia Xin and I were manning the booth on the 12th, which was a Saturday. In terms of the crowd, there was traffic throughout the entire day which was great. However, while the traffic was good, not as many stopped by to take a look at our booth. Instead, the more popular booths were those that sold jewelry and accessories and these vendors were directly to our left and in front of us.

We also made use of the location to take pictures for our Carousell listings

Sales for day 1 was slow and we soon realized that there were no tourists who were interested in buying pots. We ended up selling the pots to locals instead, who were interested in the different designs offered. Many people approached our booth to tell us that our designs were well made and one of them even encouraged us by telling us that being an entrepreneur at such a young age is a great experience as it exposes us to new environments.

I painted on the spot again since we had leftover pots while Cleo re-designed the Christmas pots on the second day. While many stopped to take a look at our booth because of that, it was extremely awkward when children just stood right in front of me and stared for a long time.

I know that it is a good thing that people stop by, but I was praying for the kids to leave.

But children really did bring a lot of sales for us because many of them were attracted to the numerous figurines- a hot seller seemed to be unicorns, which we lined on the table. Parents who bought the figurines for their children also took a look at the terrariums and decided to get them, most of them favoring terrariums over the painted pots.

Some takeaways from this event was:

Painted terracotta pots are not selling. Although there are some who liked it, the response was not good enough for us to continue it. Subsequently, we should try to clear our leftover stock and not buy new ones.
Terrariums and figurines are our main revenue streams, and there needs to be a good mix of plain and coloured terrariums to cater to the wide preferences that our customers have.
Traffic does not necessarily mean that there will be buyers. The past locations that we have went to were not prime locations with heavy traffic and the Katong event is the closest we have to a heavy traffic. However, overall sales were still lower than expected and we realized that tourists are not people we should target.
DIY concepts are something we have yet to try out and we should. Some customers asked if they could change the colors in the terrarium and asked us for specific plants with certain colors, so we will be doing this at our upcoming event.

The business is generally still going smoothly despite ups and downs in terms of our sales forecasts. Hoping that everything will go smoothly in our next event.

Sota here we come!!