Christmas Market Reflection
This term in school, we were making a product to produce and sell at our All Saint’s Year 7 Christmas Market. This paragraph will cover some of the decisions we made before the market, and during the market.
Pre-Market:
Some of the decisions we made pre-market were the biggest ones, and possibly the worst ones as well. For example, group choice. We were told we could choose a group, but in the end I was in a group of four with Advait Nitin, Cooper O’Malley and Wade Lansley. This was a rather large setback, as it had taken us a whole week and a half to get together, but after all it worked out OK. For our actual product, we had multiple ideas, including gemstone soap and Christmas tree decorations, but we chose bath-bombs shaped like sticks of T.N.T. instead. This was a good product choice, we thought, because of it’s novelty, and because there was a limited amount of this product anywhere, there would be good supply & demand tactics by making this product.
Prototyping. Prototyping was one of our main issues, as the PVC pipe we had chosen was not wide enough for the bath-bombs to hold together after emerging from the tube. We spent much longer than we should have on this part of the process, so I think that we should have tried a larger tube much earlier on.
Product Pricing: We decided on $2.99 for our bath bombs, as that was still three times the cost per unit ($1.09), and we would have been using psychological marketing techniques. Advert: for our advert, we made multiple choices, but mainly we tried to market to boys between the ages of 10 and 14, as they would be our most likely customers.
During Market:
During the market we made many decisions to change our price and sell techniques, including:
We had to drop our price to $1.99, as we had competitors who were selling for less.
We had to make sure people came to our stall by (trying) to make it look festive and happy by waving our arms around and smiling. We also had to keep our heaviest bath bombs on the corners of the tablecloth, as the wind kept blowing it away
I think one of the most important things I learnt from this is to always be prepared for things not to work out how you think they will.
If I could change some things about how I did this project, this would be them:
First, I would try to get a good group from the start. Also, with the product idea, it would be preferable to have a good one (keeping in mind competitors, ‘affordableness’, demand for that product, etc.) by the first few weeks. Then, I would try to get prototyping done ASAP, as the faster that is done, the faster you can work out kinks in the production process. If we were allowed to choose stall location, I would put us as far away from competitors as possible, so that it seems like we are the only group selling bath bombs. Also, I would try to put as much festivity into the stall, because I think that this would help sales even more than the product itself. For instance: if there was a run-down restaurant and an extremely fancy restaurant, which one would you go to (even if the run down one serves better food)? You would most likely choose the good looking one, as it seems like a better place to eat. This is a variation of premium pricing, except in appearances. With packaging, (if our product needed packaging) I would make sure that we started on that as soon as prototyping is finished. Overall, these are the biggest changes I would make if I was to do the Christmas Market again.
This has been a reflection on the Year 7 Christmas Market Experience from my point of view!