Cheryl Entry #18

Consultation with Adrian & Roderick

On the 2nd, our team met up with Adrian and Roderick and we updated them about the events that we have been to since November as well as the different products that we have tried (terrariums, terracotta pots, DIY). We also mentioned that we were considering conducting workshops moving forward and we were advised to utilize our online platforms more- Carousell, as well as sites like Lhoko and Funzing.

Our team had a discussion after the consultation to split the tasks accordingly. We decided on three things:

1. Starting sale of terrariums on our Carousell
2. New product on Carousell- DIY kits, with an order form to facilitate this
3. Reaching out to Lhoko and Funzing

I was in charge of doing up the slides to be sent to Lhoko and Funzing. It had a brief introduction of what kind of workshops we can offer, our experiences in events over the past few months, why we would be a good fit and our differentiating factor from their current terrarium workshop vendors. Carousell sellers who were also offering terrarium workshops that were similar to ours were pricing at $30 but we priced our workshops at $25, with a minimum quantity of 4 people per workshop session.

Terra Village @ East Coast Park

We had booked events for February before the consultation because the booths were selling out fast.

The event at Terra Village (9-10th Feb) was slightly different from the ones we were used to participating in because it was an event specifically targeting kids workshops. Since children made up the majority of those who did our DIY terrariums at Sota, we decided to try this out at this event. Instead of just putting in the sand, we let them do everything from scratch (from potting the plant to designing it).

Positioning

Initially, we positioned ourselves along with all the other vendors- there were two rows of vendors. After an initial peak period during the morning, the number of people participating in the workshops started to dwindle as well. After awhile, Jia Xin noticed that the crowd was avoiding walking through this path, instead choosing to walk behind us. We noticed this too late on the first day and only towards the last few hours did we shift our position. We informed the group about this after the first day and on the second day, this was the position we took (see right). Sales on the second day was much better, possibly due to this.

Competitors

This event was held by a social enterprise and they had their own internal vendors conducting free workshops. When I first found out on the first day, I felt like we were on the losing end because we were the only external vendor they had invited. This meant that we were the only workshop that passerby had to pay for which worried me. I wondered if customers would want to pay for our workshops when there were free ones for their children to attend- and whether our price of $15 was too steep in comparison.

Luckily for us, the free workshops were simple ones like an upcycling project of making bracelets using unwanted fabric and paper cutting (which we tried).

Traffic

As expected, the traffic at Terra Village wasn't fantastic. However, there were many families as we predicted which fell into our target group. Reaching the location on the first day, I was extremely worried by the lack of crowd and had low expectations for this event. What surprised me was that even there was a much smaller crowd, most of the passerby were curious about our product and wanted to know more. This was very different from Sota, where we had heavy traffic but very few people who approached our booth. Coupled with the low rental, we made quite good profits for this event as a whole.

Our next event- Sota round 2!