On week 3 of term 4 last year, the highly anticipated event that had been on the tip of every Year 7s’ tongue had finally launched! This was the Christmas Market where we planned in an innovative way to make products in groups of 2 or more that would be sold on a lunchtime in a few weeks and all of our profit would then be donated towards the Salvation Army for those in need. The Christmas Market was an invaluable experience for me where we learnt and improved skills such as, what it would be like for a entrepreneur such as the journey of designing and making the product, learning how to build a business plan, marketing, and other skills that can be used in many and future situations.
First came the process of deciding what product we would make which was when we had to identify who our target audience was, consider their mindset of how they would think, what their demands could be, what message/promise/feeling we wanted to stand for, and whether we would be able to produce it within our budget ($30). Our group of three decided to create these light bulbs filled with preserved flowers or glitter that would then be used as either Christmas or room decorations. Our message was that these ‘lightbaubles’ would light up your life and these ‘lightbaubles’ were also targeted towards female year 5-9 students and staff because females are more likely to be attracted towards flowers or glitter bauble decorations. After deciding what we wanted to make we then designed a few designs for people to choose from. That was when we made our business plan to map out the various aspects of information to avoid future mistakes such as describing our idea for our product or service, estimates for revenue, expenses and profit, and also includes our marketing plan.
After pitching to Ms Winter with our business plan ,who would grant us our budget, we then tested out prototypes to check that it would work before making any fatal mistakes on the materials we bought from the $30 budget. After a few trial and errors with our prototypes, we then finally made 20 lightbaubles by using our plastic solar charged lightbulbs (we couldn’t use light globes that were going to be throw into the bin because it was unsafe to try and open the cap as it had the potential to explode), pressed/dried flowers I’d plucked and glitter we stuck down by hot glue to the fairy light cord in the lightbulbs we were ready for the market!
During the time that we were making the products we were working on our market plan as well. We learnt the rhetorical triangle is made up of Ethos (credibility and ethics), Pathos (feelings and emotions) and Logos (logic and reason) that is used as the foundation models of persuasion techniques or appeals. Later, we made a product description and general marketing plan. The product description was when we dotted down the main aspects of our product, who it was targeted towards, global and social issues we might have to consider and how it engages with the rhetorical triangle. In the general marketing plan we described in detail on how we would reach our target audience in time for the Christmas Market. We first described our product and its message then how our target audience would be attracted to it. After describing the first strategy of promoting our product to our peers and teachers/staff through the word of mouth that also gave us the opportunity to request feedback on their preferences on the different designs we had of our product, we went to our next strategy which was spreading more awareness of exactly what our product was by using video advertisement. By using the video advertisement we could set trends, show symbolic moves or songs etc. we could even advertise the video through social media since most youth or adults are tech savvy. With that plan we also designed poster using colour and shape symbolic messages.
After completing all of this then came the day of the market. In the market we used selling techniques such as adapting to the consumer demand by psychological pricing, opportunity cost, and premium pricing things based on how much most people desired our product. On the day we also split our roles of manning the stall which we set up on the common along with the many other groups, counting and handling the money if people wanted change and listing how many sales we had, and another person trying to draw in customers to go to our store. This whole experience of interacting with a lot of people was a bit nerve-racking but it was exciting as a whole.
The other skills that we learnt through the Christmas Market included learning how to make a profit and loss spreadsheet with formatting, function and appropriate chart selection skills. Overall this whole task let us improve our teamwork, collaboration, creativity, communication and problem solving skills.
In conclusion this was a fun experience being able to learn so much from this especially since we can use what we learnt in those few weeks in many other works we may do.