Introduction

The Christmas market was an amazing opportunity where my capabilities grew and my design thinking knowledge grew. Throughout the process of the Market my group had to use different economic concepts to make sure that our product sold. Our groups product was Laser cut wooden ordaments.

Define Thinking Process

Empathise

There was lots times where my group had to empathise with the consumers. This is because we had to choose a design that people would buy.

Define

When we were defining our product idea we had think of many different ideas. This is because some may be too expensive or may get declined by the teacher.

Ideate

We had to make multiple ideas because our first idea was to hard to find and it was really expensive to make. This led to my group taking initiate and changing our idea so the whole production only cost $3.50.

Prototype

We made a draft basketball and snowflake ornament t see if they were a success. They were so we continued to make more to sell at the Christmas Market.

Feedback

Some of the feedback that my group got was to add colour to the coasters. This turned out to be a great idea because people went for the coloured objects first rather then the few that were normal wood coloured.

How My Group Determined our Price

When my group began determining the price, we had to think back to the time we did the skeleton game. This was a game where there were 5 sellers and everyone else was buyers. The buyers job was to have each of the products buy the end of the 3 days and the sellers job was to make the most money and sell all their products. This is very much like the Christmas market because my group as the producers had to make a price that the consumers would buy. If it was too high, then the consumers wouldn’t want to buy the product and if its too low then we won’t make any profit as producers. To determine our price our group used our cost per unit/product to help us find a point where we can make a large amount of profit and set the price to a point where people will buy our product. Our groups price per product at the start of the market ended up being $2.00 per product.

During the process of being in the market I realised how much alike the skeleton game and this market was. This was because they both had: multiple producers trying to sell their products, people trying to give you deals to buy their product, the prices of the peoples product changed and most importantly from a sellers view was finding a way to get people to buy your product. This involved pre-marketing or advertising. Our group made a visual advertisement which was made so then hopefully consumers could look at it and think about our product. We did this because then people could see what our product was and then take the effort to find us if they wanted our product and/or product.

When we were in the market, we realised that we had competition. Others didn’t have our exact idea of laser cut wooden ornaments and coasters which are still in the same category such as: laser cut magnets, ornaments, Jenga and keychains. There were lots of different groups, but they were all slightly different. When we were designing our product, we thought of our target audience. We made them the year 5 and 6s and the teachers through 2 different designs. They were a basketball one for the kids and a snowflake one for the teachers. We researched and found out through asking at recess and lunch what the kids favourite sport was which was basketball. That is why we chose a basketball design so then it would appeal to more people. This was a smart idea because we got more than one age category over to our stand so we could sell more. We ended up moving up our price because the consumer demand was high. Our group ended up making $84 profit and a mark-up percent of 1478.95%. Overall, our decisions in and out of the market made our success.

If I was to go through the process of creating a market product again, what would I do differently? 

If I could redo this entire project, I would change a lot from what we made to how we made it. One major thing that my group could have changed was the amount and types of products that we made. We made 39 products which we thought were a lot but when we came to the market, we found out that it wasn’t. Our group ended up selling out in the first 10-15 minutes which left another 20 minutes of potential selling go down the drain. This was unlucky because we were a popular stall and people wanted our product, but we just didn’t make enough products. Therefore, I think a major part of our time in the market was consumer demand. Our demand for our product was high so we should have made more products to earn more profit.

I also think that our group could have had more types of items. This is because we only had 2 items which meant we only appealed to a certain type of people which were sporty kids and people who enjoyed Christmas. This may seem like a lot of people but there were people who came to our stall then asked what types of products that we had and then walked away. Those kids could have been potential buyers of our product. That is why if we had more products and types then we would have been a more successful business.

Another thing that my group could have done to improve our consumer rates were bringing in more ribbon and pens. This is because when we were selling our snowflakes, we came into the problem that people wanted ornaments more than coasters. This meant we needed more string/ribbon. We didn’t have this, so we tried to convince people that they could attach ribbon on them when they got home. This worked sometime but in other times in didn’t which left potential customers going away. If we had brang string, then we could of attached it to the coasters and sold our products faster.

A similar thing happened with the basketball items. People loved the idea of having coloured basketballs on their items but there was only a certain amount of those items. This worked out on one occasion where we auctioned 1 item and made $3 extra profit from it but there were multiple other times where people wanted coloured teams. This led to a slow start after we sold out of the coloured ones which could have been avoided if we had brang our pens and done custom coloured ones.

Another thing that would of effected the amount we sold was the positioning of our stall. Our stall was positioned into the far back right of the common. This seemed good but people did a big loop, and our stall was last which led to people coming to our stall with no money because they had already spent most if not all of it. This means that we mostly sold to the people with more money so then they could buy our product. Therefore, I would move our stall to the position of on the diagonal to the front of the common. This is because its one of the first stalls you would see if you walked in through canteen way and people would see your product first and buy it straight away. Therefore, I would have my stall in that position so then my group could sell more products.

Our groups last thing that we could improve on was our pricing. This is because our products sold out super-fast which meant that there were consumers that wanted to buy our product. Our product was based at $2.00 but could have been sold for much more. Our group only realised this at the end where we moved our products price up to $5.00 and people still bought it without second thinking. This is why if I did this project again I would have upped our groups project price so we could have earnt more profit.

By Eli Saratsis 7Z