Sunday, February 28, 2016

EMRS TEAM 2 MINI ROADSHOW: FRUI-TEA-LICIOUS

Objectives

Our event was held from 17th to 19th February, 1030am to 330pm, outside Old Shopping Arcade.

The two vendors that we worked with for this Mini Roadshow were Momolato and Matchaya. The objectives for our Mini Roadshow was to finish selling all 500 popsicles that we brought in from Momolato and at least 50% of the stock for Matchaya.

Our revenue sharing was 60-40 for Momolato and 70-30 for Matchaya.

Vendors




Momolato sells artisan gelato and popsicles. They aim to bring across the taste of authentic, fresh, homemade Italian gelato made only with fresh milk, premium and quality local and imported ingredients as well as pure sorbet on sticks. Momolato specializes in doing pop-up stores.
Matchaya imports high quality Japanese tea powder from Japan. Every flavor is carefully and painstakingly formulated with different suppliers within Japan. They specializes in events and delivery of the teas. The raw ingredients are organic-certified, no preservatives are used, and the sugar level in the teas is minimal.

Pre-Event 

A huge amount of effort were put in in making the A&P materials and the whole team were involved! The A&P team focused on crafting the human sized 3D Popsicle and the posters. They assigned the other marketing materials such as banner, table banner and table displays to the rest of the team so we could all work together as a team!


Rachel drawing a kiwi slice for the human sized popsicle!


A&P team painting the watermelon juice on!


FINAL LOOK OF IT!


The hard working Liza behind our beautiful posters!

Hybrid poster


 

Individual posters that were placed at the booth!


Of course we had to put up our lovely posters around the school!


The non-A&P team working on the banner!


Our logistics team meticulously planned out the allocation for manpower and logistics list prior to the event. They had to make frequent trips to the logistics room to look for fixtures that the A&P team needs. 

We did a mock set-up a week before the event so we could gauge the space that we will be sharing with Team 3 and also to have an idea how our booth will look like with most of the decorations up.



Boon Wee acting as Momolato's menu board! Hahaha!




Event Day

After weeks of preparation, the D-Day has finally came! We were all so excited and nervous at the same time on the day of event. On the first day of the event, we did not expect that there will be a delay in the Popsicles delivery which resulted a slight delay in setting up the booth. Nonetheless, our team worked hard together and we managed to start the event on time for both second and last day. 

   


Everyone taking down what they were assigned according to the logistics manpower list.

   

Receiving stocks from Momolato! The delivery man could not find his way to Atrium entrance and we took almost 10 minutes to navigate him. When he arrived, we had to count the stocks immediately. 



Meanwhile, the rest was efficiently setting up the booth!





 






Phew! It's finally done up!! 


Time to start the event!!


Based on the first day response, we realized that the sales only start picking up after 12pm because most customers said that before lunch was too early to have popsicles. Therefore, we came up with a brilliant idea to do pre-order of popsicles for the morning part! 

However, a lot of them did not collect their popsicles after reserving it. So, from the second day onward, we made it a must to pay first before we can reserve the popsicles for the customers!

                         


As for the mobile selling team, sales were recorded on a notepad. This means that, our team members who were in charge of the booth, will have to record and key in the sales for the mobile selling teams in the POS machine. It was a tedious process but yet so necessary! 

However, we do faced some problems at the cashier. During the peak hours, the cashier was busy with the sales at the booth and do not have time to key in the sales for the mobile selling team. Also, there were a few other mobile selling teams who came back too at the same time! 

Our poor cashier team had to be able to stay calm while handling the sales payments efficiently. 

                                  
Even the canteen store owners supported our event!

We also found out that mobile selling was the most effective way to push sales. Everyone took turns to be a part of the mobile selling teams and we were very happy to see our efforts paid off when we hit each day's sales target. 





Our advertising efforts did not stop at the pre-planning process of the event. We continued to promote our vendors' brand during the event by encouraging our customers to post a photo of themselves with the product on their social media account. 

To make it more interactive, we made used an online portal, www.liveflow.in, to stream Instagram photos in real-time like a slideshow presentation at our booth. Anyone who posts a photo with a caption of either "#momolato" or "#nypfruitealicious" on their Instagram account, will get to see their photos featured on our LCD screen!




A photo of our happy customers! Yummy!

Tear Down

Everyone in the team contributed in the tearing down process and everything went smoothly because of our great team work! We ended each day with a short debrief of what went right and what did not go so well. 

                         




The event was concluded as a success because we were able to push beyond our limits and hit the projected target. This would not be possible if everyone had not put in their 100% effort. 

Our objectives of the event was to drive sales and we indeed, managed to hit all sales target for all three days! We could not believe that we were able to do better what we have expected!

Not only was our supervisor impressed with our team effort, our vendors that worked with us were pleased with our results too. As quoted from Matchaya in one of their email reply to our supervisor; “We understand the difficulties faced and am impressed how they (EMRS Team 2) overcame the odds for our tea powder!” 

We would also want to take this opportunity to thank the vendors, teachers, students and everyone else who have supported our event. This event would be not be a success without you guys!  

Signing off,

Team 2.

Monday, February 22, 2016

EMRS Team 2 & 3 - Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to integrate the Enhanced Internship with the SkillsFuture Earn and Learn Programme



Date: 26 January 2016
Venue: Marriott Hotel Singapore
Time: 745am - 11am

About the Event: The five polytechnics, Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and five retailers signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to integrate Enhanced Internship with SkillsFuture Earn and Learn Programme. An additional 11 companies signed the MOU to offer Enhanced Internships for retail students. The MOU signing ceremony was held at an Industry Practitioner Seminar at Marriott Hotel which is organised by the Singapore Institute of Retail Studies (SIRS), witnessed by Mr Ong Ye Kung (Guest-Of-Honor), Acting Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills).

The MOU Signing ceremony was coordinated by Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) (the Retail Sector Coordinator Team (SCT)) in support of national SkillsFuture movement.


- Rehearsals @ TFA
Team 2 & 3 rehearsed twice at Theatre For the Arts. The first rehearsal took place on 15th January 2016 while the second TFA rehearsal took place on 25th January 2016.

Rehearsals were conducted to ensure that everyone familiarized themselves with the floor plan and transitioning of guests during intermissions. All the supervisors assisted with the rehearsal. Everyone chipped in in providing constructive suggestions as to how the flow of movement should be like. The setting at TFA was not to scale and it was pretty difficult to visualize how it would be on the actual day of the event.

Additionally, Team 4 helped out during the rehearsals as acting MOU Signatories. It took some time for the teams to get adjusted to the programme flow, however, everyone managed to grasp onto it quickly. When the time came to rehearse for the last time (the day before event execution), it was to fine tune the minor issues.

Setup of the layout for MOU rehearsal (All teams were involved with the setup and logistics)

Team 4 act as Signatories 

   Layout of each signatory on the stage

Actual rehearsal with Mr Edwin as the Emcee & Abitha acting as GOH

- Rehearsal @ Marriott Hotel
Rehearsal took place at Marriott Hotel Singapore on 19th January 2016. All teams were to be involved on that day as well. This time with more prominent figures to further guide us. From there, things became clearer since we were at the actual venue. Some changes were made to make the event more efficient and effective in the way they were carried out. 

Having already ran through the event flow, our crew was able to carry out our responsibilities with finesse.


After rehearsal at Marriott Hotel with the EMRS crew

Prior to the event, certain things had to be established first. Firstly, we had to see to the seating arrangement for the MOU Signatories and the VIPs. It took a few rounds for the seating arrangements to be finalized. We had to put careful thought into the seating arrangement bearing in mind that the MOU Signatories had to be hosted by the SCTs. The changes in seating arrangements kept changing as the guests took some time to revert. The registration list took a long time to finalize because up till the day before the event there were still pending changes. There were changes to the RSVP list on average every two days. We had to tally the guest particulars to ensure there were no mistakes regarding their identities. Additionally, we had to prepare a list of items required for the event – one provided by the hotel while the other items were brought from NYP to Marriott Hotel Singapore.


The logistics list was well organized and we collected all the required logistics from the different area OICs. The preparation of the logistics was not an easy task as we needed to bring more than required, hence, we needed to triple check the items and ensure that nothing is left behind.

We had to prepare tent cards for guests who had allocated seats. Regardless of whether invited guests had allocated seats, tent cards were also prepared for them. Team 2 and 3 worked together to make the process much faster. We pretty much had to cut, tape, and paste and then pack them into different bags that represented each table.

Furthermore, tent cards had to be double checked every so often because the RSVP list changes as the days went by. The process was tedious but we managed to pull through.

Event Day:
Team 2 and 3 had to report at Marriott Hotel Singapore by 7:45AM.

Everyone was to report at the registration booth, and breakfast was provided. After having a light breakfast, everyone was broken up to their individual areas. The registration crew had five people, ushers had four people excluding teacher ushers, Terigu room had six people and the stage had nine people.

The ushers were also briefed on the floorplan, each given a set for them to guide guests to their allocated seats. There was also an A3 sized map which showed where the tables were located in the ballroom. There were also ushers positioned near the escalator on level 2 and 3 to guide the 16 signatories to the Terigu room and the ballroom.

There were two students and teachers in the Terigu room. The students had to guide them through the documents and had to made sure that the signatories signed at the correct area. The teachers also briefed the signatories about the sequence of the ceremony.

The registration staff on the other hand were each handed a set of registration list with all the names of the guests invited by NYP. Pearlyn had the master copy of the registration list so that she can update with Ms Quek on the guest attendance when needed.

The registration staff were required to request the guests to do a manual registration if they have not done it online. If the guests have already done it online, a representative from SIRS will scan their QR code to confirm their attendance. The registration staff will have to inform the guests their table number and an usher will guide them to their designated table. 

 Registration girls tabulating attendance with WDA forms

The Stage crew had to setup the stage. They placed the table name holder, one placed the document for signing, others placed the NYP folders and pens, witness footprints while the rest cleaned the plagues. 


 Stage crew – Raymond, TengChong, ZhiBao and Michelle in position to have a feel of where the GOH and the witnesses will be positioned

Boon Wee had the final check of the layout and adjusting the minor changes 

Mr Sudesh had the final check of the whole layout

At 8:30AM the MOU Signatories started to arrive to sign the documents. Ushers were stationed near the escalators to usher them to the Signatory room. Then when it got near 9AM more guests started to flow in and the area started to get more crowded.

Everyone got to the venue earlier to help out with the event setup to make sure that the logistics were in place. Things went just as planned. There were briefings given to us such as getting the guests to fill up a form in exchange for their door gift at the end of the event.

The registration crew received the guests politely. There was an instance whereby a guest turned up for the event on behalf of an invited guest. It caused a little confusion for the ushers but it was settled very quickly.

Before the ceremony commenced, the stage crew were all prepared and on standby for the event to start. We greeted the VIPs and guests with a smile and kept our image professional.

Conclusion:


In conclusion, the MOU event was successful as everything went smoothly. The registration crew were able to cope with unexpected situations and attending to guests politely concurrently. The ushers knew where to guide the guests to their destined table. Teammates who were stationed in the Pre-signing room (Terigu room) were able to get the signatories to sign on all the documents. Furthermore, they were able to handle the issue of a couple signatories coming in late to sign the documents. Stage crew were 100 percent alert and always on standby to react to any issues that could have happened. Importantly, both teams gave the guests their lovely smile and greet to keep a professional image with our NYP shirt on. On top of that, we were praised by our Principal and CEO of NYP, Ms Jeanne Liew.


We felt this event experience helped us to gain real-time knowledge of event planning and it also gave us the necessary skills in the future. We were grateful to have nice supervisors to guide us along the way of the event.



With love,
EMRS Team 2 & 3