7. Directions

Short post ahead, just wanted to lay out the current situation and discuss about the future.

At this point, we're in the middle of this preparation phase. As mentioned in the previous post, we made 2 kinds of prototypes,the first has the concept of capturing a piece of nature and replicating it into the jar in its full size, and the second is t create a miniature world in the jar. After some thought it was quite clear that the latter is a lot more favourable than the former, both in terms of producing and in its overall aesthetics. The kind of products we will be making in the future will therefore mainly be of the second type: a miniature world in a jar.

There are a few reasons for this decision, but it all boils down to one point: what the customers want. Simply put, when customers purchase these kinds of decoration products, they look for uniqueness and exquisiteness. In order to satisfy these criteria, our products must have a lot of variety in their design, and it is not suitable for us to mass produce one type of design. This is where the second prototype truly holds an edge over the first one.

Comparing the two prototypes side by side, perhaps at first glance both of them have good potential to sell. In fact, it was consensus among our group that the first one looked better. However, after much thought we felt that the second one is much more versatile in design; the sand colour, the different kinds of figurines and dried flowers, their placements and interactions with each other etc. Whereas for the first one, there is constriction both in space and its elements (eg. we only have 2 colours of rose). This gives the second type much more potential.

Our CEO then gave an idea of creating products based on stories (or vice versa, both works). This gives our products even more points in terms of uniqueness, but it has its own difficulty, so we shall see how it goes in the future.

As of now, our general direction will be to make products based on the second prototype's idea. This means we have to source for a lot more figurines, dried flowers and sand.

As for the marketing side, to be honest I am quite clueless on what we should do, especially since our products are not out yet, and I do not feel that our prototypes are good enough to be put on social media. Currently, we are simply posting pictures of flowers that our CFO Aaron took the effort to capture in the Botanic Gardens. However it just feels like we are not getting the social media presence that the Profs talked about. I really feel it is a better idea to post only when our solid products come out.