Our Team Blog
Our Group's Experience - The Road Towards (Hopeful) Success of Flormiere!
I. Flormiere Founded!!!
Today is a truly joyous occasion! Over the past 2 weeks, our business team came together to discuss on various types of businesses we could start. After lots of Skype calls and much heated debate, we found a common product category everyone was keen to work on: dried flowers.
Following further discussion, we decided to focus on 2 specific products: terrarium decorations for desks and dried flower bouquets.
We then settled on a brand name - Flormiere. Flormiere is a portmanteau of 2 words: Flowers and Lumiere(French for 'Light'). We felt that our brand name carried the essence of our business - bringing light and happiness to our customers with our flower products!
More details about the business plans for Flormiere can be accessed on the tab 'Business Plan'. Stay tuned as we aspire to make this a success!
-6/4/2019
II. Product Design Ideas
Every business starts with product development, and for the past few weeks we have been coming up with various concepts and ideas on how to make the terrariums and bouquets.
It wasn't easy: no one here has any experience in design, but after much research (looking at how other companies do it), we got some general ideas that could work.
After the exam period, we will be meeting up to actually bring these to reality. Stay tuned!
-1/5/2019
III. Prototype Creation
By the time we wanted to meet up to build the prototypes, our overseas supplies still hasn't arrived. Therefore, we went to several local stores to source for materials for our prototype.
After running a few stores, we found some nice jars in Daiso which suit our product design.
The first design we did was to paint our prototype jar with glitter and glue, but it did not turn out well.
In the end we did one without glitter, and lo and behold, our first prototype!!
-4/5/2019
IV. Sourcing For Supplies- Part 1
Like any other product based business, we need materials to create the products. Sourcing the materials was not easy - we initially intended to source all our needed materials online; However, it soon became apparent to us that doing this alone was not a feasible solution: reason being that the delivery time between batches would simply be too long, sometimes lasting between 2-3 weeks!
Also, you really get what you pay for. The really cheap jars we bought from Aliexpress were pretty much unusable....
-27/5/2019
V. Consultation and Feedback
We had our first consultation with Prof Roderick and Adrian to discuss how far we have come as a group, the challenges we have faced, as well as the short term goals.
In general, the group seemed to be on track, with R&D Testing already being done using the initial sample orders we bought in the first few weeks of our business.
Product wise we are still in development, as the prototypes are not satisfactorily enough.
-7/6/2019
VI. Prototype II
On the same day as our first consultation, we had our second prototype session with our overseas supplies. Our sentiments were the same as what Prof Roderick pointed out: The quality of our jars were too disappointing, with the glass being too unclear. Thus, we did not order again from these suppliers.
Our next plan is to go to Malaysia for cheaper and faster supplies.
-7/6/2019
VII. We are now Online!
We now have a facebook page, instagram page and website.
The website was the hardest to build. Sindy and Kimmy took much effort in building the original website using Wix. However, for some reason, Instagram (and Facebook, as both share the same website validation services), did not like our website, which was built with Wix. According to Facebook, our website was "Violating community standards", even though we clearly did not have any illegal content within the webpage.
We tried feedback routes, as well as using URL-Shortening service to do a redirect to the website. However, Instagram and Facebook would always block the website which was built with Wix.
Thus, as a last resort measure, Aaron built the website using Wordpress service, which can be accessed from here.
We have also created our an Account on Carousell, and populated it with our initial products. You can find our store here!
-13/6/2019
VIII. Sourcing: Malaysia
The slow process of overseas supplies led us to get our supplies from Malaysia. Unfortunately, We chose the wrong date to go and ended up wasting many hours waiting for our turn at the customs. In fact, The suppliers were closed by the time we cleared Malaysian customs! As a result, we only managed to get some materials such as sand, decorative items and fragrances due to time constraints.
But wrong date or not, Malaysia may not be the best choice. We are currently looking for alternatives, and there are a few local suppliers that are quite promising...
-16/6/2019
IX. Prototype III
Third prototype session! This time its serious business: we aim to create at least one actual sellable design today. However, as we were still new to doing such products, we took many hours just to craft 2 prototypes. And even so, the designs wasn't representative enough of the quality we wanted to achieve with Flormiere.
Thus, after the session, we went on to think of how else we could improve our production speed and designs. Some suggestions within our team included looking for more suppliers so we had more materials to work with, and buying better tools (E.g. Wire cutters or bigger, longer tweezers) to speed up production.
Really need to step it up in designs.
-23/6/2019
X. Prototype/Product Making
After 2 weeks of researching and practicing, we met again, this time really determined to come up with sellable products. And lo and behold: we created not 1, 2, but 5 of them today! The efforts spent on researching and practicing was worth!
Of course, there were still lots of room for improvement. One problem that took lots of time was placing all the LED lights in place. And generally we still take way too much time doing a single terrarium. This is because we aim to make all our design different, which is very time consuming.
Nonetheless, its a big improvement!
-6/7/2019
XI. Product Making II
It seems that the problem we mentioned just worsened. In just 2 product making sessions we are experiencing burnout in coming up with new designs. Took a long time to create a few products, with some disappointing design. This time we even experimented using clay to create more unique figurine but it was very time consuming.
Update: We solved this problem! Turns out that the lack of figurines are limiting our imaginations. But luckily we found a shop that sells a large variety of figurines, and since then, inspiration keeps coming!
-15/7/2019
XII. Product Making III
Following the previous session issues such as delivery time and poor designs, we found a local distributor that sold the craft supplies we needed, such as preserved moss as well as nicer looking glassware and figurines which we could use in our products. The pricing was relatively competitive but sourcing here will allow us to have access to more materials, without worry about hitting the MOQ. Another advantage with a local distributor was that we only needed to drop by his warehouse to get more supplies., which is very convenient.
The cost price is going to be more expensive than that of buying from Alibaba. However, we solved multiple problems at once, mainly the quality of the materials, the MOQ, and the designing (they provide a wide variety of figurines that gives us more inspiration in design). It is a worthy trade.
This session was also used to create some products, which we have managed to sell out.
For this post, we are featuring Aaron's blog. Find out more about what went on here!
-22/7/2019
XIII. Product Making IV
Our group met up to do even more designs. Compared to the first few products we made, it feels like we have really improved in our art skills!
These designs have been placed on our Carousell.
One slight setback is that our initial supplier has informed us that the round type of jars which we initially bought are out of stock and there are no plans to re-stock those. This jar was very competitively priced, so it is a setback that will surely increase our costs as we search for more expensive alternatives. Fortunately, we already have other promising suppliers to get our goods from, and the cost increase is not that significant, so this is not expected to make a major impact on our business.
-29/7/2019
XIV. Marketing Strategy
So far for marketing, we have been posting images of our products and to gain organic followers and likes.
We have quite a acceptable range of followers and likes for our posts as a start up, however the amount of sales through marketing were low.
We have tried planning for pop-up stores for our products but due to manpower, finance and time constraint to create product we were unable get our sales through offline sales. However we still plan on having pop-store in the future to increase the offline sales to gain awareness in our local context.
After several discussion we plan to experiment on boosting our post to gain followers. To reach out to more audience, we also decided to create a post for national day, funny videos and to make tutorial videos to make our content more exciting. We also created accounts for Carousell and Shopee to help us as a platform of E-commerce for online sales.
-6/8/2019
XV. Happy National Day!
To celebrate Singapore's Bicentennial and National day, we created a Giveaway on our Instagram page! Instagram Users could like our photo, follow us and comment for a chance to win one of our terrariums. For bonus points, these customers could tag their friends. The reason for using this game mechanics was to encourage our followers' friends to take part in this giveaway too. To boost the reach of our contest, we spent some marketing resources to boost this Giveaway.
We're happy to say that as part of this giveaway, we have attracted more than 115 entries, with these entrants tagging more than 315 friends to view our contest! This would have helped to bring market awareness to our product offerings. At the same time, we have also garnered 134 people visiting our profile. The contest alone also brought us more than 40 new followers. This indicates that we have more people which are interested in our products, so perhaps the low sales are due to the high prices. We plan to roll out the DIY Kits soon, so we can earn more from our target segment.
-9/8/2019
XVI. Product Making V
Our 5th session for making products. Compared to previous session, we felt that our design have improved even further. The placement of LED lights were also more efficient.
We even utilise LED lights to act as a exterior decoration for our photo shoot.
-18/8/2019
XVII. Finishing our Current Supplies
Before purchasing more inventory for our DIY Packs, our CEO wanted to finish some of our current supplies before starting on the pivot -DIY.
Hence, we met up to do the last few finished products, to put up on sale on both shopping platforms.
We also made tutorial videos of each DIY products so that the customer have guide to make their own maintenance-free terrarium.
In this meet up, we also made a short funny video to be use as marketing strategy which will be posted and boost in Instagram soon.
You can see the latest products in our individual posts!
-25/8/2019
XVIII. A Marketing Stunt
To get our instagram followers laughing (and watching our flormiere social media accounts), We created a marketing video that is humorous. According to SGAG (Shared in a DEVIATE Conference, Singapore), Creating a emotionally compelling video helps people remember our video (and hence, our brand and message!). Thus, I acted as the boyfriend that forgets to prepare a celebration gift for my girlfriend. I'll leave the details of the storyboard out. Below are the details to access the video:
Check it out on our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flormiere/
A quick survey with our friends showed that the video indeed was interesting and humorous. Fortunately, it isn't too embarrassing a video for Aaron, our CFO!
To capitalize on the hype, we also ran a private sale where followers could get a further discount on selected designs if they PM'ed us on our social media/shopping accounts to find out more. #StrikeTheIronWhileItsHot
XIX. A Business Review
Business has not been as strong as we had liked.
We initially set out and hoped to sell at least 50 products by the end of our MIE Programme. However, despite marketing efforts (with ourselves sharing the posts to friends), as well as the use of hashtags with our (almost) daily Instagram posts, we have pretty underwhelming sales.
In addition, it has proven to really be a challenge to deliver the finished products to customers. Due to the fragile nature of our products, we are unable to use standard logistics services to deliver our finished goods. This means that we have to personally deliver the goods to customers, which translates to alot of labour costs. We have attempted to find alternative solutions, but thus far, we have been unable to make our finished products more durable, without compromising on the overall look of our products.
We are fortunate to have a decent number of good reviews for our Carousell and Shopee platforms. Ratings are 4.8 for Carousell and 5.0 for Shopee. Our customers (friends) that purchased our product privately, provided us constant feedback on the customised designs. Most of them were satisfied with the design, we will try our best to alter the design to their liking. At the end of the day, we want to ensure that our customers have a great purchase experience with us.
Within the group, a few of us wanted to deliver DIY Kits rather than finished products to combat these issues. However, there was some internal conflicts to continue with the current business model, since on paper, it seemed like we would have more profits from delivering finished products. However, after a discussion with our professors, we have decided to Pivot our business, to sell DIY Kits to enable customers to build their own floral dried flower decorations. Our group will only need to process and pack the items needed for each design, make the videos, and publish it on our social media.
These packed items can then be delivered by standard courier services such as Ninjavan, which will help us cut on alot of labour costs. In addition, over the course of the business, we realize that not many customers are willing to pay between $29 - $40 for each product. Hence, DIY Kits are a sustainable solution which will allow us to reach more customers.
Look out for our next range of products meant for DIY!
XX: Our Financial Numbers Thus Far
XXI: Farewell! (Or, Is it, really?)
Time flies, and we have reached the end of our ET9135 (Business Venture Implementation) Stint.
However, we don't see this as the end of Flormiere. While we won't be as involved with the business (due to the hassles of uni or working life), In the short run, we aim to sell out our current inventory of Finished products and DIY Kits.
We may also produce more products based on the raw materials that we still have, and will re-sell raw materials which are in "new" condition but not needed at this time (e.g. the mason jar lights, which have been listed on Shopee).
In the long run, we may carry on the business as a "re-creational business". Some of us would make new products and designs available when we have the inspiration and time to do it.
If you haven't done so, Follow us on the Following Web Pages and social media accounts, we will update them as long as this business lives!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flormiere/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Flormiere/
Shopee: https://shopee.sg/flormiere
Carousell: https://carousell.com/flormiere
Website: http://flormiere.wordpress.com or http://flormiere.com/home