Christmas Market Reflection
Before the Market
On the 20th of November, the year 7’s had the wonderful experience to run the Christmas Market held at All Saints College (ASC) to raise money for the charity Salvation Army. We worked in groups and received an investment of $30. I worked with Jessie Lau and we followed the design thinking process (the picture above the text). For me, one of the hardest parts was thinking about what we were going to sell. We brainstormed through many ideas such as candles, boxes, jewellery, screen printing, etc. We started canceling ideas that weren’t meeting a certain criteria. We then thought about using Perler Beads. These beads were affordable and easy to use. Pitching our idea to the teachers became very stressful, as we were told to come back with different prices. We concluded that the small designs were $1 each, medium designs were $2 each and the large designs were $3.
We originally decided to make all Christmas designs, but we heard a lot of people talking about the game Among Us. Neither of us played or new this game so we did some research on it. Once we saw how popular the game was and that we were able to create the characters we decided create a whole bunch of them. Sometimes while we were creating them, it would get a lot of attention and lots of people were asking if they could purchase it. People would also ask us if there was any accessories for the characters and this comment came quite popular we decided to make some. We also made mini Among Us characters. The accessorise and mini Among Us characters were 2 for $1 and the Among Us characters were $2 each.
However we had a problem, we didn’t have any more black left over so we had to use grey for some of the designs. I think we should of thought more carefully and chosen designs that didn’t use as much black. If we did this then, we could of made more designs helping us get more profit. This problem also led us to being unable to finish off some of the other designs we had.
Christmas Market Day
n the day of the Christmas Market, we received a $20 flat and we had to choose where our stall was going to be. Last year, I went to the Christmas Market as a year 6 (the target audience), and the first place I went and looked at was near the canteen because the canteen is the only way you could get into the market. Because of this, we decided to place our stall near the canteen because we knew (and from past experience) that the year 5-6 (the target audience) would look around there first.
We also changed some of the prices of our products before the market started. We made the Among us accessories $1 each, the large designs $4 each and the Among Us characters $3 each. This became a big success because people paid the price without any hesitation. We sold out in the end and the Among Us characters sold out in the first 5-10 minutes. We were able to make a $31 profit. But it was very exhausting keeping track of who was buying what and keeping an eye on all the products and money.
After the Market
Overall, this was a new experience I have learnt a lot from and would like to do again. Next time I would like to improve on the pricing and preparation. I also think we could have thought more about our stall set up so it would of been easier to communicate with each other and the consumers.
The market was a big success and I will be implying the skills (such as the design thinking process) into other projects I will be doing in the future.