Describe your experience:

For the past week, I have been part of the PMSS winter market. For me, i think it went better then i thought it would be. Juliana, Stephanie and I put up a carnival with 3 different games that our customers could play. We priced our games at $2 for one game, $4 for 2 games and $5 for 3 games. We thought these prices were reasonable but some we ran into some problems because a lot of our potential customers weren’t willing to pay that amount of money. Eventually, we added onto our original idea by selling gift bags full of our prizes and candy in order to attract more customers. Another challenge that we faced during the market was our high cost of $100. It made it very difficult to break even. We didn’t earn much money on the first day so we knew we needed to advertise our stand better if we didn’t want to run a deficit. Our stand and our area gave us a big advantage but also a disadvantage at the same time. We had a lot of space to work ad operate in which means that our area is more visible, but we were also in the corner of the lobby, which made our stand less appealing. It was also harder to decorate such a large area and we had to be creative when it came to putting up our prizes. In the end, I still believe that that we tried as hard as we could and that lead us to making profit.

The reason that we decided to choose this product is because when we were brainstorming ideas in class, we had many good ones but they were already taken which meant we couldn’t have done it. As we were thinking about a fun and different way to earn money, we thought of a carnival with prizes and themed games. We got warnings from our teacher because there were groups in the past who ran a carnival and didn’t do so great. That was obviously a lot of pressure because we knew we had to do better than the past groups. In the end, we decided that the risk was worth it so that is why we decided to run a carnival. The reason our theme is ‘Save the Planet’ is because we wanted to spread some awareness about the harm the we are doing to our earth. The materials that we used to make our games were from the recycling in order to use as little waste as possible. We also tried to order our prizes and supplies from local businesses to cut our carbon footprint. We knew that this theme would get attention since climate change is such a big topic that everyone seems to be discussing.

Examine Your Experience:

We had to change our approach multiple times in the course of 4 days. For the first day, we noticed that we weren’t receiving much attention because we were in the corner so on day 2, we started making ourselves seen. One of the ways we did this was by playing music, drawing attention to ourselves by playing our games as a demo and also we would take turns walking around the fair to get potential customers interested in what we were doing. This approach worked because on our revenue for day 2 was double the revenue of day one. After a successful tactic to take in more customers, we continued to do this throughout the next two days. On the third day, we took it even further and started advertising our big prize in the cafeteria. We realized that a big reason that people were playing was because of the jumbo prize so if we can create some competition in that area, more and more people would come back to play our games for more chances to win it.

As I have mentioned before, this experience went better than I thought it would, only because we were very nervous on the first day and things weren’t looking very good. We knew that we had to be more confident so we started attracting more customers by day 2. We broke even on the final day with $9.50 of profit which I never thought would happen. Of course I wanted the market to go well but I didn’t set my expectations very high to avoid any potential disappointment, but in the end, I was left with a pleasant surprise. something I didn’t see coming, however, was how many prizes we had left over. We were worried that we wouldn’t have enough prizes at first but in the end we didn’t need that many to break even. All I have to say is that I am pleased with my group’s behaviour during the fair and that it was a great learning opportunity.

Articulate Your Learning:

In this market, I have learned the importance of having a good network with clients and good money management. I have also learned that the physical attractiveness of the space that you’re selling your product is very significant to the amount of sales you’ll make. I learned these 3 things because when you have a good network with people, you can get them to buy your product or get them to spread the word about your product. It is much easier to connect with your customers and also gain more customers. Finance and accounting is one of the most important area of business in my opinion. Good money management makes it much easier to see how much you have spent, how much you made and how much more you’ll need to break even ( or how much profit you made). It will also help if you are organized with the number of your products and the prices that you’re selling them for. The final element that I learned is that in order to attract customers, your space needs to be clean, aesthetically pleasing and it needs to display your products well. For us, this was difficult to do because of how our space was set up but even without a normal stand, we tried to make our space look nice with lights, garlands, Christmas decorations and lots of other colourful decorations. We knew that if our space was sad and lifeless, nobody would want to have fun there.

In the future, if this were to happen again, I would sell an actual product instead of a service. There were advantages to being a service but selling a product would make everything much simpler and the cost would also probably have been lower. We would save time, effort and money if we did sold a product instead. However, despite the fact that I wouldn’t  do another service in the future, I could still take all of the knowledge that I have gained this time in order to make the next market better and more prepared.

Core competency reflection:

I chose communication to reflect upon because I believe that it was important. Listening and talking to our customers is a big part of running a successful business. We needed to get our point across to them if they need clarification or even some persuasion in buying our product. We also needed to listen to their questions and concerns about our product so we can help them to the best of our ability. We also needed to work well with the people in my group by communicating with them. If we didn’t communicate well, we wouldn’t be coordinated and we might also lose money and customers because we would give out the wrong information. I believe that our communication during the sale was good and that we listened to each other. If one of us had to leave our stand we would always tell the others to avoid confusion.

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