Nadina's Blog

Winter Market Reflection

Step 1: describe your experience.

During the 2019 Winter Market I worked with my partner Kiana to create a business and product. I thought creatively and critically to develop a product and concept that had a high probability to succeed in the market. Doing that by thinking of an idea I would want, then finding out if others would be interested and finding out the details of how to develop it through a survey. We named our business CHAINZ and we sold necklace and jean chains. We created these specific products to provide teenagers an affordable and convenient place to get trendy pieces of jewelry and accessories, since they can be difficult and expensive elsewhere. We bought the materials and cut and assembled the chains, then packaged and sold them during the market. We ended up selling out and making a revenue of $139.05 profit of $68.56.

Step 2: examine your experience.

When we were figuring out prices for our products, we wanted to keep it as low as possible. We originally had our prices at $4.50-$7.50 but then we realized that might be a bit high. We then lowered our prices to $3.5-$6. This was a change in our approach, we wanted to make sure people could afford our products, while still making a good amount of profit.

Initially going into this class, I thought it would be very easy and not a lot of work. After learning more about how businesses and entrepreneurships work, I saw how much effort it is. With being an entrepreneur, everything depends on how much work you are willing to put in. If you do the bare minimum you may not be as successful as if you put effort and detail into everything you do. This experience was not how I thought it would be, when it comes to the workload.

Step 3: articulate your learning.

From this course I’ve learned how to create and carry through a successful business. I learned how to create and adjust products, make a in depth business plan, talk to customers and much more. I learned how to this by doing a survey, adjusting numbers, learning from my teacher Mr. Valente, practicing my business writing skills through different assignments. Learning these skills are useful if you want to peruse a career in entrepreneurship, or if you want to learn how to do business writing. In the future if I were to do this again, I would focus on the digital marketing and table presentation, even though those two parts were not my responsibility as they were my partners responsibility.

Step 4: core competency reflection.

I am going to reflect on my communication skills. During this course I took a leadership role in my business. When I had an idea, I explained what I wanted to do and elaborated heavily on my work and idea through my business plan. When my partner, kiana had ideas, I listened and tried to find ways to fit them into our business. When it came to our business plan, we divided the responsibilities. I had more of the things to do, including financial literacy, business plan overview, business operations (who, what, when, where, why), SWOT analysis, dealing with sending information to the winter market website group. I did my share of all of these responsibilities and I also helped my partner lots with her parts, including the survey and digital literacy. I told her how to do it and gave her many ideas on how to execute her parts. I found information and resources online about the materials we bought and figured out if they are good for us, I wrote about the opportunities and threats that we had from the materials.

Below are some pictures of my products and table. You can visit our business Instagram @chainz_entrepreneurs for more pictures and inquires. If you would like to visit the 2019 Winter Market website to get more information, you can do so through the link provided below.

http://https://www.instagram.com/chainz_entrepreneurs/

2019 Winter Market Website