Monthly Archives: September 2022

To me, the key to success in a business is gaining constructive feedback from your customers. Getting feedback allows you to improve your product and make it more appealing towards your target audience. To be able to do this we were given the opportunity to participate in a markets on the common where we then decided we would conduct our product validation.

My plan for the product validation was to make 20-30 cookies of the 3 different flavours and icing design (As stated in my previous post the custom icing didn’t work out) then give them out for free in return for them to complete a Microsoft forms that would give me the feedback based off what my customers opinion of the cookie that they’d tasted. This would then allow me to see which cookie flavour would be the most popular in future upcoming markets.

Altogether I would say that the market was quite successful as many customers enjoyed my cookies and gave good feedback. I also gained some feedback from friends who ordered some giving me some more money in future markets meaning that I wouldn’t have lost any from this one.

The results from my forms are shown below:

My first aim was to find out who my customer was so by finding out the age group and gender would help me identify who my target audience was.

The median price for the vanilla was $1.50, chocolate was $1.25 and lemon was $1.50. Getting these opinions then showed me how much to sell my cookies for, so I decided that I’d sell 1 for $1.50. In terms of the bigger batches of cookies the median prices for vanilla $4, for chocolate $4 and for lemon $5. In my opinion I wasn’t going to sell a big batch of cookies for that much as it would cost me 50cents to produce 1 cookie meaning that my unit price was $1. I’m still unsure about how much to sell the pack of 4 cookies for but am thinking about either $3 which would give me a $1 unit price or $3.50 which would give me a $1.50 unit price.

Some things that I would like to improve from my product validation market in terms of presentation and advertising would be to think about the presentation of my stall before the day of the market as when it came to the day the only things that I had was 1 poster and my cookies in a box meaning that it wasn’t as clear what flavour the different cookies were. I’d say that I also wasn’t the clearest in terms of what my customers were required to do and should’ve made a poster on what to do as many customers kept on continuously asking “How much do they cost” and their understanding of what was required wasn’t the clearest.

To me the most important thing is to see ways how you can improve your cookies. In the last question which was optional I asked them to give any ways that I could improve. The first was to include a new flavour which was choc chip and the second was to make it softer and chewier.

Despite receiving good feedback and having no cookies left by the end there would be many things that I would want to improve on in terms of presentation for future markets. I was happy that we’d done this product validation and am excited to present my improved cookies at later markets after I continue with more ideating.

At first when starting this cookie business, I was thinking cookies will be easy enough to make, icing might consist of a bit of trial and error but would still be reasonably easy. Well lets just say looking back at that now, I was extremely wrong and that we ‘flearning’ is just part of life and that sometimes you need to celebrate your failures.

My plan for the production of the cookies was to make the icing the day before so that it would be a bit thicker when I iced it and when it came to the actual making the day after I would make 3 different types of the base cookies which consisted of cocoa, lemon and vanilla. I would then allow them to cool and ice different designs on to them which included reindeers, snowmen, marble and flowers.

To be able to make these cookies with minimal cost and not having to mess around looking at lots of recipes I decided to find one that had simple and cheap ingredients that would be bland but once I customise and add the lemons/vanilla/cocoa would be full of flavour.

My altered ingredient list for each recipe

I was unsure about what cookie designs to put on the cookies so I decided that I would find some inspiration on pintrest then get feedback from different people. The feedback that I received was definitely constructive as people said that some of the Christmas ones looked a bit creepy and that the doughnuts had warts. Then based of this feedback I decided that I was going to make 4 different designs; marbling, snowman, flowers & reindeer.

When I’d started making the cookies everything was running smoothly as I’d prepared the icing the day before and left it to chill overnight, made the cookie dough in the morning and left it in the fridge for a few hours. Then all of a sudden lots started to go wrong. While the cookies were sitting in the oven some were kind of deflating and becoming larger and thinner while others were staying the same shape. I didn’t understand the reason behind it, as the dough came from the same batches and before putting them in the oven insured that they were all a similar thickness. After this I continued to persevere and thought that it will be fine I can just slightly alter some of the designs when I ice them.

So I allowed the cookies to then cool overnight then would ice them the next day, except that also didn’t go very well. The first design that I was going to ice on was the marbled ones, so I used a tutorial that I’d previously found in YouTube the day before that seemed easy enough. Next time when someone says Before doing something make sure that it’s within your limits and if it isn’t at least learn how to from an ‘expert’ as I seriously should’ve thought about that before starting.

The icing didn’t turn out very well as it was just making biggest mess ever therefore wasting most of the icing, didn’t look appealing and tasted way too sweet on top of the cookie. I then asked for an opinion from my Dad who recommended doing swirls on top as it wouldn’t make the icing too sweet on top and despite not looking the best would be better than previously.

But sometimes you just have to view this in a different way as across life nothing’s ever going to be perfect and that we learn from our failures and that sometimes you have to celebrate them.