Jiaxin Entry #10
On Monday and Tuesday, Cheryl, Ram, SK and I went to OCBC centre to set up a booth at their recreational centre.
Before the event, I was rather confident in our sales as I believe the small terrariums will be a good desk companion for the office staffs. However, the sales were an extreme disappointment as it fell way below our target and expectations.
- One major factor to this was that OCBC often hold booths at their recreational centre and terrarium / plant vendors are a common sight to the staffs. With limited desk space, they would not need another terrarium to clutter their desk. Instead during the event, there were more people heading to the food booths, and booths selling novelty no-tie shoelaces and socks. Therefore, there wasn’t any novelty factor for our products.
- In addition, the location of the recreational room was also a problem as it was located at the basement of OCBC Centre South. Although the OCBC building is big and may house up to probably more than 300 staffs, only a small percentage of them will go to the basement to play table games or eat at the tables there. Therefore, traffic to the event venue itself is low.
Marketing
Promotion
I did not plan for any social media posts prior to the event since it is a private event that will only be open to OCBC staffs. The event in-charge helped us forward an e-mail mailer designed by Cleo to the staffs at OCBC Centre to publicize our booth for the event.
After the event, I have also posted a thank-you post to thank our new customers. By doing this, it could help boost Frond's credibility among our current followers, or potential customers as they will be able to see the events / corporations that we have attended and worked with.
Product
With Christmas approaching, we brought in Christmas greeting cards and figurines to sell as our side products. Although terrariums were not well received among the people at OCBC, the additional basket of figurines at the side were able to draw customers to our booth.
On day 2 when there were lesser vendors around, our sales were much better. It could be because there were lesser gifts choices for them to get for Christmas. On the other hand, we also had customers buying just the figurines only. One of our customer told us that she often set up a miniature display at her house, and that the small Christmas figurines are well suited for her display this Christmas.
Price
After our consultation session with Mr Roderick, we have decided to increase our profit margin. Previously, we had sold terrariums at 1 for $12, 3 for $30. The margin was so low that it was probably not worth the effort.
Therefore, after our team discussion, we have decided to set a base price of $15 each. This would also give us some leeway to hold any sales promotion in future where we can price it slightly lower and telling customers that the usual price is $15.
For the event, we have priced our terrariums at 1 for $15, 2 for $28 and 3 for $38, in hopes that the staffs will buy together as a group to optimize the discounts. However, it wasn’t really successful as I have seen one of the staffs asking her colleagues if they want to get together, but they do not want to.
All in all, I feel that the OCBC event was a great learning experience for us. Although the sales were bad, we have learnt that we should do the following for corporate sales in future:
- Conduct a site reccee of booth location before agreeing/ booking for a booth
- Find out what the past vendors have sold, if terrariums are something common it might not be favorable to us
Till the next post!
Jia Xin