Entry #9

Yesterday was the first day of the TGIF Bazaar event held at White Sands Shopping Centre. I was tasked to transport the terrariums and the items for the booth setup from Cleo's house ro White Sands together with Ram. I borrowed my brother's car early in the morning and Ram and I drove down to Cleo's house, picked up all the necessary items and made our way down to the event location. We reached the location at about 10am and, together with Shun Kai, we started to set up the booth as the event was to start at 11am. We took some trials with the setting up of the booth to make it look more appealing and after several tries, we finalized with the set up shown in the photograph below. We laid out all the designs of terrariums on the table and we also placed figurines on the front of the booth in the hopes of attracting children.

Within the first hour, I managed to make the first sale. However, after that, there was not much people walking by our area and we did not manage to make much sales. It was only after mid afternoon that more people came by our area and visited our booth. Many showed interest in our terrariums and from then on we started making lots of sales. Apart from the terrariums, many customers found interest in the figurines and there were good sales through the figurines as well. By the end of the night we managed to sell 22 terrariums. Once the first day of the event ended, Jiaxin, Ram and I packed all the terrariums and the other items and transported all of them to Cheryl's house which was near to White Sands Shopping Centre. It was a really tiring day but I was quite happy that we did manage to make quite a few transactions given the low customer traffic we had during the first half of the day.

Throughout the day, I also tried my best to encourage people to follow us on our social media. One thing great that I felt our team did was that for every purchase by a customer, we placed a name card , that contains our Facebook, Instagram and email, in their paper bags. I felt this would encourage more people to follow us and contact us after they reach home.

Today, I went down to our booth in the evening to help out. I was glad to see that my team had already managed to secure good sales by the time I reached. In fact, there was much more people visiting the area and our booth throughout the day as compared to yesterday. Till the time the event ended, we kept having sales and we ended up selling more terrariums as compared to yesterday. Once it was 9pm, event was officially over. We started packing up and called it a day.

Overall, I felt that this event was a great experience. Our team managed to get good feedback from the public regarding our products. I had a few people approaching me and asking if we could conduct terrarium making workshops for their company events. Although it wasn't a service that we were providing now, I felt that it is something that Frond should pursue in the near future. I also got acquainted with a new friend,who works at OCBC, during the event. He loved the idea of terrariums and he said that he could link us up with his colleague who could arrange a booth for us to sell our terrariums in their company. Seeing much people interested in terrariums and the designs we had to offer also gave me confidence in Frond's products.

On a flip side, I felt that the location of our booth was quite bad. Much focus should be done on the location for the next event that we participate in. Transportation of the terrariums is something I felt we need to improve on as well as some of the terrariums looked a little bit shaken when we brought them to the booth.

Although I am satisfied with our performance during the weekend, I am looking forward to a better December for Frond. Let's hope for the best! This is Shiju, signing off!