One of our last assessments for year 7 was one of the most creative, and most challenging. For the Christmas market, we got in groups of 2 – 4 in had to design an innovative, sustainable product to sell to years 5 – 9. All profit would go to charity, and a lot of us thought of it as a competition to see who could make the most money.
I ended up being with Xiang in a pair, and we had a lot of different ideas. Our first was for dog treats, but we were not prepared when we first pitched, and we didn’t get the investment. Then we went to beeswax wraps, which we didn’t end up pitching for because the total cost of the resources would far outweigh the cost of the thirty dollar investment. Then we had another completely different idea, with candles. This idea came from when Xiang told me his sister did candles when she did the Christmas market, and apparently made a lot of money by doing so, so he sent me a photo of them.
But unfortunately, we found out the very next day that there were 5 other groups already selling various candle products. So we went back to dog treats, but this time we put in an awful lot more research. We worked incredibly productively for the next few days figured out prices, what recipes to do, what the packaging would look like what our stall would look like, and how we were going to pitch the idea. And so, next time we went for our pitch, we absolutely smashed it! We got the investment straight away, and ended up being the first group in our class to get the thirty dollar investment. It was time to get baking!
The main reason we chose dog treats is because we knew we were appealing to a very broad target audience, seeing that so many people own dogs in this age bracket. Another reason we chose dog treats is because we knew no other group was selling them at the market. This was great because it meant we could afford to inflate our prices, due to the treats being in such low supply and in such high demand. This also meant that we had no competition, which was great, because we wouldn’t have to lower our prices and put our profit at risk because of someone else selling a very similar product to ourselves. I also chose them because I knew that my mum had some really good recipes for dog treats, and that they had been consumed by my own dogs on many occasions, and they would always love them, every time. I also thought they would be a good idea because I knew they were really quite inexpensive to make, considering the prices that we would be able to sell them for, so there was an awful lot of money in this product.
In the end, we settled on two recipes, ham and parmesan flavour and tuna and herb flavour. Both of these flavours were crunchy, healthy, and were only made with the finest ingredients. The following Friday, I was able to get the ball rolling, with a prototype batch of the tuna and herb flavour ready to go.
Then we got testing! Using the biscuits from the prototype batch, I tried it out on fifteen different dogs, including, but not limited to; Ruby, Tex, Wilf, Jesse, Cassie, Tiger, Patch, Tuppence, Penny, Poppy, Pixie, Trevor and Bunny. They all loved them!
Now that I had conducted some quality market research, it was time to get down to the business end of things. I had to design an advertisement for my treats, come up with suitable packaging, Think about what kind of pricing I was aiming for, and get an endorsement from a vet. Fortunately, designing appropriate packaging took virtually no time, and I was very satisfied with what I had come up with.
The packaging did end up changing a bit after this photo was taken, though. I ended up ditching the pegs for glue, for two reasons. Firstly because we quickly realized that pegs were more expensive than we first thought, so they would be completely ruled out for financial reasons. Also because we realized that using glue would create a far better seal on the bag rather than using the pegs, so the freshness was another factor that led us to get rid of the whole peg idea.
After this, though, we were going from strength to strength. I got an endorsement from the veterinary surgeon Michael Whitfield, which helped our case as far as professionalism went. It also got rid of any potential customer doubt, in case they thought our treats could be in any way unhealthy to their dogs.
And then it was rime to package them all. In the end, we made the decision to put 7 treats in each bag. We thought seven was a good number because 6 seemed too little of an amount to put in, which could deter some customers, and not to do 8 or more because otherwise we wouldn’t be running on very much profit. This was because the pricing had to be in whole numbers, and naturally we would want to charge more for more treats. But this meant we would either have to keep the prices the same, decreasing profit, or increasing prices, but this would have put the bags at 4 and 5 dollars each, which we thought was a bit too much money to spend in one go on dog treats, especially seeing the recommended amount of money to bring to the market was around 10 to 15 dollars per person.
And then it was market day! we had been very prepared for the big day. We knew exactly what our stall was going to like, and I had even brought in a few various dog – related props for the occasion. We chose a stall under the shade, which was in ourselves and our potential customers’ best interests, as it was quite a hot day.
And then the customers started flowing in! Teachers, kids, everyone wanted our product! There were always eager customers st the end of our stall wanting to see what all the fuss was about. We made $25 in the first 5 minutes!
In the end, the market turned out to be a huge success, and we over tripled our money. But, more importantly, The Christmas market had taught us many valuable lessons about economics, supply and demand and various other economic concepts. If I were to do the Christmas market again, I don’t think I would change much. I am very proud of how Xiang and I went in this project, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.