Christmas Market Reflection

At the very start of the project, we chose our groups, I was in a group with Jayden and Sam.

The way we first came up with the idea was weird. So, I was talking to my Mum about the market, and she said: “Why don’t you do bookmarks, they can be Christmas themed with poems, songs and jokes and I can laminate them”. So, when I told my group about it, we took the idea and improved. Jayden said why not do Laser-cut bookmarks, then Sam, said why not do Laser-cut ornaments and bookmarks. So, we chose Sam’s idea. Little did we know, this would be one of the most successful items at the market.

Next was our pitch which we overprepared for, with us accounting for every cent in pricing and every millimetre mentioned. I had to write the pitch but probably went a little overboard in the pitch with the details. We got our pitch after 2 attempts, we would have got it in 1 but there were a couple too many “um’s” and “uh’s” which prevented us from getting it.

 We got to work, designing our products and purchasing the items required to get make them. We worked out that it would cost $8.50 for all the products. The price was cheap but the products were extremely detailed. We cut 37 ornaments, 6 acrylic snow-flakes and 1 bookmark. I would have made more ornaments as our best ornaments sold out quickly and we could have made more bookmarks if not for 1 miscommunication between Jayden, Liam (the laser-cutter) and me. In the end, we made $121.20, which was one of the highest profits (if not the highest profit) in the grade.

ASC Capabilities

I think we had great organisational skills throughout the project. We all knew what we were doing, we all knew where we were and who was staying behind to cut. I feel this is because we had communicated effectively throughout the project with everyone getting a role. Our first 3 roles were: Ridley-Pitch writing, Sam-Researching costs and dimensions for products, Jayden-Designing the ornaments. We all knew this and as a result, we didn’t clash and made good progress early. When it came to cutting, we all volunteered to give up our time and went to the hanger to do the cutting. We even made a simple schedule of who would go at what times.

I improved on my economics skills a lot as at the start of the project, I was thinking of selling these products for $2 which would make our product extremely cheap and thus would make us have a smaller profit. After going through a couple of lessons I realised that this product should be sold at $3-$4 and that our previous price was way too cheap. I think in the end this was a good idea and this would have drastically impacted our profit.

Something I found challenging was that sometimes my group members were not cooperating well and that at some parts we couldn’t get anywhere. An example was early on in our pitch when Jayden though that our pitch was excessive and we didn’t need that much detail. So, he didn’t want to practise his parts until the pitch was “fixed”. In the end, we came to a compromise, he practises his part of the pitch but Sam would get slightly more to speak. I think this was a good compromise as Sam had previously practised the pitch and knew what he was saying so an extra sentence was easy enough for him.

To conclude, overall I think that the Christmas market was a good idea and valuable learning experience for all involved.