Overall, we weren't very successful. We did have quite a lot of customers glance at and examine the items, but not a lot of them were compelled enough to pay money to buy our accessories.
Our day started off early in the morning at 8; we needed to make the necessary preparations for our booth, which included making a cardboard stand to hang some of the necklaces, finalizing the prices and making price tags, discussing how to attract customers, etc. We got to the school at about 10-ish, and spent an hour setting up our booth.
During the fair, we had quite a few friends come over and look around. Unfortunately, none of the items were of their taste; this seemed to be the case for a lot of other people. Adults and teenagers manage to notice our booth, but didn't spend much longer than 5 seconds there. It was mostly kids who couldn't take their eyes off the products; we had one girl who came to our booth 3 times and looked as if she really wanted to buy one (haha).
As time past, we didn't see much better progress, so we came to a decision to cut all the prices by 50%. When we did, we managed to sell off the most expensive items in store - the necklaces, which were originally $80, and by then were $40.
In summary, we sold 14 items, including other items not made by us:
-2 earrings
-6 necklaces
-2 phone charms
-2 rings
-1 bracelet
-1 brooch
In total, we made $370 HKD. We also received an additional $200 HKD donation.
(I'll later update with the pictures of the items we made that were sold)
I believe that we both agree that this experience was very meaningful to us in a lot of different ways. We were able to get a glimpse of the hardships businessmen and advertisers go through to sell off their products and establish beneficial ties. We were also hit with a realization that knowing what the majority of the public likes was very crucial to success. As the fair came to a close, Michele and I came to a conclusion that our target audience (teenagers and adults) do not like cutesy designs such as strawberry hair pins, and that antique and metallic necklaces proved to be much more popular. We both decided that we should make accessories in such a way that would be more suitable to people's tastes.
We also learned the importance of location. Because we were in a room that was slightly isolated from where some other booths were, that could have been why we were not able to garner a lot of customers. We also learned that deciding on prices did not only take the amount of time, effort, and money into account, but also on how much customers would be willing to pay.
(To be updated with more photos)
Our plans from now on:
-Set up our Facebook page to help garner more attention
-Possibly carry out our business globally --> international shipping
-And of course, continue thinking of more designs and making more accessories :)
-Marcie-
