BP14: Consultation Checkpoint II

3rd August 2019

We met up with our Professors to discuss our current status in the business, and seek their advice.

To date, sales have not been too good. I still remember that on our first consultation session, Roderick asked: How many of these designs do you think your group can sell? Sindy started with 40, and each of us basically added 10 to the number, with our most optimistic forecast being about 70-80 designs sold within the 4 month period 🤣.

So, how were our sales numbers up to this point? The reality was that to date, we had sold less than 20 Products, which is pretty far from our expected number. In addition, sales from our currently chosen shopping platform, Carousell, have not been good, almost no sales. Most of our sales were from our current network of friends who were interested in our designs, as we have been spreading the word by sharing posts from our Flormiere instagram account onto our own personal profiles, to enhance the reach of our marketing efforts. (By doing this, we tap into more than 1000 followers, vs just 180 Followers on the @Flormiere business account, at time of consultation).

Furthermore, up to this timing, the Logistical challenge which we identified in the business plan session could not be solved. Because of the fragile and easily shifted materials within our product, we simply were unable to find a reliable way to ensure our finished products could get to the customer unscathed using reliable methods. All of us had tried many methods - experimenting with different layout methods, as welll as different types of glue to try and hold the stones, sand and flowers in place, but our attempts failed either because they made the product look unsightly, or were simply ineffective. Currently, each product sold was personally delivered by us to ensure that the products reach the customer intact.

I knew this was not an ideal solution as we would need to spend so much time to deliver our finished products. Thus, Sometime within our group's futile attempts of creating alternative workarounds, Some of us (including me) had already considered that we could create DIY products which customers could set up themselves. However within our group, we also had conflicting factors that held us back. Some of us felt that a DIY product could regarded as Low-end by customers, thus customers may not want to pay as much for the product. Furthermore, Some of us in the group felt that our current direction (to sell a unique "story" that goes along with each of our designs) was good, and that the market just needed more time to know about our products, so we continue with our initial plan up to now.

As such, we wanted some advice, and went for the consultation.

Some of the main things pointed out were that:

1) We needed to improve our social media presence. Our current reach was still insufficient. Since then our group has came up with a plan over the coming days to boost our reach and market presence.

2) We have been doing posts on both Instagram and Facebook thus far. However, our efforts on Instagram have been far more successful, compared to our facebook page, which has barely attracted 10 "likes". We were advised to focus our efforts on the more successful shopping platform (instagram), and make the best out of it.

3) I mentioned that we planned to open another shopping platform, such as Shopee, in the hopes that a bigger shopping platform will allow us to reach more consumers. I initally thought of using Lazada, but misread and thought it required us to pay to set up an online shop, until Lili pointed out it was free for us to do. We were also advised not to get open too many shopping platforms as each of them required time to set up and maintain (a crucial point since our venture has only a few members, only 4 of us!)

4) We needed to ensure the people we are targeting are really interested in our product, and there was a a market for it. Since the consultation, we researched and it does seem that our target audience is correct (i.e. target Youths and young working women interested in floral designs)

5) As for our logistical issues, Roderick told us to explore the DIY route. This would allow us to ship more products quickly, and would also be very useful for our group, as the school semester was starting and we would have even less free time to ship products in this manner. Thus, our group has already begun work to create a DIY set that customers can create our products with. Instructional videos would be created, and Roderick suggested that these videos could also captivate our customers attention and desire to create such a product. In terms of finance, it makes sense for our team since we would have to spend less labour cost per product created, thus allowing us to reduce manpower hours and total cost per product made.

During the consultation, Roderick warned us that under WHOIS, our domain name was technically not owned by anyone in our group. Instead, it was being held by the company that helped us to initially register the domain. There were cases on such companies holding the domain ransom, and hence we needed to solve this problem as soon as we can.

Since this consultation, I have immediately reached out to our chosen service provider to claim the rightful ownership of the domain. Fortunately, the company we have engaged has great support and has provided instructions which would allow us to port the ownership of the domain back to us. However due to ICANN registration issues, we had to wait until the website was held by them for 60 days, before we can port the ownership to another domain provider. Thus, it seems that this is an unfortunate mistake that I would need to fix after the graded portion of this module is finished.

On hindsight, I'm thankful that I made this mistake in this venture. Had this been a start-up I created in future, with more money invested, this could prove to be a very costly mistake for my business. Read more details about the reasons why we ended up in this mess here!