Crystalise is a new business that my partners and I have decided to carry out. It is a candle business that will contain Amethyst chips, an essential oil scent, and an extra surprise inside. At the moment my group and I have collected our loan (of $60) and we are now slowly starting to buy products. We should be able to make the majority of our products in the next couple of weeks. I think at the moment we are struggling to have any enthusiasm for our new project, just because our last project was more interesting and there was so much more for us to do. We have though created a new Instagram account for our business (@crystalisebusiness), which has had lots of requests to purchase our product, which is helping our business grow. The biggest issues our group is having are staying within our budget and finding a place to actually make our product.
11/11/21
The Crystalise business is on the way to making our candles (we are planning to start making them by next week). We accomplished lots of things today and we were able to prepare our tags, update our money sheets, and plan an official date to make our product. Our biggest issue this week was trying to find things for us to do/complete, I feel that next week because we will have bought our products and made them it will give us something to work on during class.
$20 Boss was an amazing experience for me. The project was meant to make us use our business and creative skills in 20 weeks to create a business and sell a product/s. I was bursting with ideas when I started that I thought would appeal to my target audience (which was the All Saints’ College students). I worked in a partner-ship and we all eventually came up with the idea that we should create a food product that would last a long time, thats when we came up with the idea to make rocky road. My original goals were to make a business that was ethical and have a product that people really liked. During the experience I relied on many capabilities including problem solving and organisation, I defiantly need to work on effective communication skills because I feel that I didn’t always explain things to my group the best.
My group and I decided to draw out our prototypes so we knew what to expect.
When my group decided that we would make our business, “Chocolicious” that would make and sell rocky road we started creating and working on our idea immediately. We decided that we wanted to make rocky road because we liked the idea that it would appeal to students because it is sweet and delicious and it would be aimed at anyone, we also thought that are business idea was clever because it was cost effective and we knew it would appeal to the All Saints’ audience. My group and I faced lots of challenges during our project, including whether we had enough products to sell and the frustration of cutting and gluing our labels, we over came these issues by working together and pushing through to complete our tasks. During the design process we worked really well at our prototypes and ideas, this helped us get a vision of what our products would look like. Once our business starting moving along we decided to do a survey and ask people in our classes whether they would buy our rocky road if we sold it at certain price, people weren’t fully convinced so we knew we would have to do something to entice them into buying. We told people in our classes and our friends to come to us at Lunch time and try our rocky road for free, if they liked the product they could pre-order and that would ensure that they would definitley get a piece of our rocky road at the market. We made $145 just from pre-orders, this meant we had to make a minimum 29 bags, we were a bit nervous about the amount of orders we had and how many people said they were so excited to buy/ receive a bag at the market, we knew we had a lot to do.
Here is a picture of my group and I working on the our logos and business cards. This was a frustrating process but was worth it.
On the day of the market, we had around 80 rocky roads to sell and in one hour we sold every single product. We were really organised on the day we each were in charge of doing jobs including writing down who had bought what, handing out our rocky road, talking to the customers and restocking our rocky roads when the table didn’t look full enough. We only had two feedback sheets filled in but they were really good feedback giving us 5/5 ratings. We were really impressed with what we achieved and were really happy with also the skill we had learnt during this amazing process. During Term 2 I would really like to keep going with the business and expand, we also want to listen to our feedback from the customers and add a more diverse selection to Chocolicious’s products .
This is our stall at the market. We decided that we would wear pink because we thought it might entice people to come have a look at our products.
The capabilities helped me be guided to make the right decisions to create a better business
I had so many ideas for the Christmas Market. When I partnered with my partner, Kim, I had to modify some of my ideas, or we just got rid of them because we thought they would not sell or they would be too expensive to make. One of my ideas that my partner liked was the idea of home-made pot-plants, the only thing we were worried about was that other groups would ideas similar to ours. Making our clay pots was really hard because it took a long time for the pots dry and trying to make sure they didn’t crack was also a challenge because we had to be careful when we were smoothing the clay. The fun part was definitely putting the plants in their pots. When we placed our Marigold in our pots in a few days time they had adorable seedlings poking out of the soil, this was a big selling point for the Christmas Market event. We were really impressed with our labels because we thought they were really cute and informative at the same time.
During the market we were really nervous because we weren’t fully prepared, this for a multiple of reasons, we had so many sales in less than 5 minutes, 10 minutes before we had to go start setting up for the lunch ( this is when the market would start) we still had not attached all the labels so we had to complete them really quickly. Thankfully we were quick and completed the labels and they still looked really good. We didn’t realise how popular our plants would be, we had so many sales that by halfway through lunch we were down to our last 5 pot-plants so Kim and I decided we were smart and we doubled our money (we sold our last plants between $4-6). Even though we made our prices more expensive we still had people who wanted to buy our pot-plants which told us a lot of things, one that we had really quality items, two we had put them at a reasonable price where students could still afford our items and three we also had good deals so when we sold items to customers they brought their friends to us so we got more money and more pot-plants were sold. We were really proud of ourselves at the end of our Christmas Market.
At the end of the market, we made a total profit of $67 and we were able to pay back our float and our investment that the school gave us. The money that we earned went to the Salvation Army and help people in need. A part of the project that caused the most separation was what we were going to make and we able to sort this issue out by using our creativity and thinking of something that we both liked and suited what we wanted. We were really good at using one of the college capabilities, Ethical, we would reuse tin pots and turn them into pot plants. Overall, I and my partner both worked really hard and we both had our ups and downs.
Here is a photo of Kim and I at the Christmas market before the market had started.
Our Utopian project started before we even knew it; it started back in Term 2 when we began reading the book “Giver” by Lois Lowry. The whole point of us reading this book was to understand and learn what a Utopian society was. Later on, we did a project in Science that taught us about being sustainable and all the things that can be implemented in a house and community that can have a positive impact which taught us ways to create a greener world. The other major thing that we did to prepare for our project was we learned about constitutions in HASS and how to make them, this then helped us to create our constitutions for our community. In my personal experience, I was taught a lot through these projects which gave me the ability to do my Utopian Project. The whole idea around the project was to try and collaborate with other people in our year that we would not usually work with and to try and increase our creativity by working with these different people. Another big reason is that we needed to learn how to create a more sustainable future for our world.
Global Goal
My favourite global goal that my group and I were able to achieve was Sustainable Cities and Communities. I thought we implemented this goal into our community very well, I thought that the idea of having no roads was a really clever idea to apply into our island because our group found out that hundreds of insects, animals and plants are destroyed in the building process of roads. We wanted to put a stop to this issue on our island by requesting that our community would use equipment like lawnmowers to create a pathway that will have been grass that is shaped to be a green “road”. I love how we placed so much green energy on our island; I think by placing our island in a good area helped make the concept of having so many renewable energy sources look more realistic. A worry I do have if we did implement all of our group’s sustainable ideas onto a real island would be that it would be quite expensive, a counter-argument we thought of would be that in the end placing these clever ideas would be worth it and it would have a positive difference on living creatures. Having a sustainable community was a big goal for our group and I think we achieve the goal and implemented it in our society very well.
College capabilities
The All Saints College capabilities were a guideline for our group trying to make sure we were creative and inquisitive but also remembering to keep in mind that we needed to be self-aware and have effective communication skills towards our group members. I think I was very good at achieving creativity and organisation, but l could have improved on my communication skills. A way I could improve could be I could ask my partners if they want to say anything and taking a break for a couple of minutes so they could have a chance to speak. A part of the project I am proud of it when we had to start rushing around, we were surprisingly good at still being able to keep calm and not getting into arguments. Our creativity skills were really good when we had the initial thoughts of the project. Altogether we were a really good team that clearly worked together sensibly.
Favourite Part
My most favourite part of our Utopian project was being able to create our model. This task involved everyone, meaning we had to work together efficiently and effectively. In the next 2 weeks we were able to design the shape of the island and start and finish painting. It was amazing to see what our group had completed with such little time. Once we had completed the base, we had to start adding the details. This was a challenge because we had to position particular buildings in certain areas, so it was a more sustainable idea.
Improvement Goals
The part of the project I thought I could have improved on most would have been the public speaking. For me this is a big challenge because I get very nervous, I know I could have improved a lot more if I had put less on my palm cards so I wasn’t reading of them but also I should have referred to them more because that could have helped. At the same time, I was also proud that I was able to speak to important people with quite a bit of confidence. I felt that sometimes I forgot to mention important parts that we had done in the Utopian Project and then my partners had to mention it. I also think that because I wasn’t used to speaking to important people I had a little bit of stage fright because I thought that they were quite important people so I wanted to make a good impression on them. So next time if I practise a bit more, I will be able to achieve a better performance. Overall, I was pretty impressed at the presentation night with what I said to parents, teachers and important people.
Conclusion
The Utopian Project taught me about how I can shape a better future for the world. I have learnt many things over this period of time, and I have also learnt that what I have learnt in this project will most certainly help me in the future. Overall, my group and I were very good at our presentation night and clearly tried our best. If I did this project again I would unquestionably like to try and redo my palm cards so I was a bit more prepared as I could put less detail in so I wasn’t reading of my palm cards as much. Our model was incredible and indeed demonstrated if we had a real island what it would actually look like.
