Date: 17 February - 19 February 2016
Venue: Outside Old Shopping Arcade
Time: 10.30AM to 3.30PM
About the Event:
A Sweet Break was a mini roadshow that sold Soi 55's Thai Milk Tea & Lian Hup's old school snacks. The theme and idea of this roadshow was inspired to spur on students to take a break with our products since it was the exam period. We designed our booth with vibrant colours so that it is easier to attract customers and at the same time fit in with our theme. We decided to bring in Soi55's Thai Milk Tea because their products received positive feedback from students the previous time it was brought in and we feel that it would appeal to both the students and teachers. Old school snacks would also be a popular demand among the students and teachers as well.
Our Roles and Objectives:
- Introducing products that appeals to our students and teachers
- An opportunity for the team to gain experience in the planning and execution of a event from scratch
- Engage and meet the needs and wants of the consumer audience
The team took into account that the roadshow will be held during the exam period and we decided to bring in sweet products with a relaxation theme, A Sweet Break.
Pre-Event:
We had a few issues in securing and choosing of suitable vendors. However, once everything was settled, the team members fired up and began engaging themselves with the Advertising and Publicity segment. Our 2 A&P In-Charge listed what was required and we had a team discussion where we delegated each task.
Advertising & Promotion
The A&P team went to Plaza Singapura to recce for the various materials which includes the banner, menu board and other A&P props. Everyone played a part in crafting the A&P materials.
1.1. The production of Poster
The poster had gone through several trial and errors. We came up with several designs to attempt to fit with our theme. As we brought in old school snacks, we began to levitate towards the idea of a retro-ish cafe feel for all the designs we had. After many tries, we decided to tie the poster with our event banner together by fitting the background of the banner in our poster.
Befitting to the Retro Theme
1.2 The production of Menu Board
As our theme was a retro-ish cafe, we found a way we could incorporate the cafe feel to our event. We came up with a classic chalkboard to list our promotions. This would then be our menu board. The board was designed based on Pinterest found cafe boards.
Hard at work
TADAA~~ The final product
1.3 The production of Banner
Cutting out the letters for the banner
1.4 The production of Arrow Sign
The arrow sign was strategically placed to point towards our booth from the escalator area. The team used the leftover paper from wrapping the poles for the arrow sign. We then drew out retro fonts that spelt ‘GET YOUR’. The team had the idea to print out the Soi 55 and old school snacks pictures to put on the arrow sign for better visualisation of our products.
1.5 The production of Soi 55 Mascot
With only two days left to our event day, our team created a Soi 55 mascot for further publicity.
Cardboards and colour paper were used to craft it. Our two OICs "volunteered" to be the mascot that roamed around the school together with their respective mobile selling teams.
Trial Mock Up:
Two days before the event, the team decided to do a trial set-up at the event’s venue. With the trial set-up, it helped to ensure feasibility of fixture placement. The trial mock-up assisted us in having a rough idea of how set-up would be like and the time frame we required. In addition, the trial set-up would help us identify any flaws in our planned booth design, thus minimising any potential delay of the set-up on the actual day. During the trial, we noticed several flaws and made the following improvements:
1) Positioning of the banner
Our initial plan was to secure the banner against both sides of the table. However, this was not feasible as the banner was shorter than the length of the table. Hence, we tied the banner to the table legs to secure it.
2) Arrangement of the tables
The layout that we had earlier planned (L-Shaped) did not work well due to the presence of the ice box. After discussing with the team, we decided to change the table arrangement. In order to fit the ice box perfectly against the wall, the team changed the orientation of one of the table such that both tables were arranged next to each other. Furthermore, the POS system was bigger than we expected and this had impacted the overall booth layout.
Initial table orientation
Subsequent reorientation
3) Booth Design
In terms of the booth design, the team decided to display a few bottles of the Soi 55 drinks on one table. Apart from that, we displayed several traditional games (e.g. five stones, chapteh) which was in line to the products that we were selling. On the other table, instead of displaying the snacks in rows, we placed them in the tins provided by the vendor as this would give out the “old school” feel.
By doing a trial set-up, we were able to familiarise ourselves with the set-up on the actual day such as the placement of fixtures and the amount of time needed to complete it. Through this trial, we were able to ensure that all the fixtures required were available.
Event Day 1:
We started the day fast as we all knew what to bring to the event venue. Our stocks from Lian Hup had arrived the day before and we left our stock in room 409. We had delegated several team members to collect what we needed from the fixtures room while the remaining team members brought down the materials we required from room 409.
Our Soi 55 stock was due to arrive at 10.30am, just in time for our event to start. They were on time. However, during setting up, we found that the ice box had a hole in it and was leaking. The floor quickly became wet. This made things very dangerous for both customers and the team as anyone could slip and fall.
Unshaken, the team used rags to clear up and properly set up the booth. However, this caused a slight delay in the moving out of our mobile selling teams. The team was split into 3 groups, with 1 staying at the booth and the other 2 teams designated for mobile selling. Our mobile teams brought out both Soi 55 and old school snacks for selling.
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Weilun as our soi55 mascot
We allowed the different mobile selling teams to gauge the amount of float they would require and sent them out for mobile selling. Our mobile selling was restricted by the limited number of iceboxes we could use.
We were left with 54 bottles at the last hour and we had to cut the prices from $4.70 per bottle to $4.00 per bottle. During the team discussion, we agreed to try as hard as we can for the next 2 days to not cut prices anymore as we saw that it was unfair for the customers who had purchased from us earlier. The cutting of prices was our last resort to sell all the bottles. It had to be done by manual transactions and keyed into the POS the next day after the new price was put into the system.
At the end of the day, we realised that there were discrepancies with the POS system for both the money as well as the stocks. There were 6 bottles missing from the sales report generated at the EOD.
Event Day 2:
The day began in a shock for our OICs when they received a call at 7.30am that the ice had been delivered. This was way earlier than our event timing. In a panic, we rushed to try to contact any friends we may have in Cheers to get them to help us keep our ice for us in their store. However, before we got to doing that, we managed to request and arrange for the ice to be returned by the vendor again at 10.30am instead.
We reported to EMRS at 9am and scouted the fixtures room for more available ice boxes for mobile selling. Our search was not futile and we had acquired extra ice boxes. Soi 55’s delivery was also slightly delayed as they were caught in a traffic jam.
On the first day of the event, we had a close shave of possibly not being able to sell all the bottles we had. This scared us and we decided our selling strategy required some changes. We found that mobile selling was more effective than the booth so we reviewed and reorganised our mobile team structures from 2 mobile teams to 3 mobile teams, all focusing on Soi 55. Our main intention was to ensure we sold all 200 bottles that we brought in. The restructuring of our team enabled us to cover more areas of the school effectively and efficiently. To better keep track of our money, we gave each mobile team a float of $25 only. The mobile teams were reminded to keep their revenue and float separate when returning for cashiering, so as to avoid confusion. Collection of the $25 float was done at the end of the day.
Our mobile selling team
Despite our precaution, there was still a surplus of about 18 dollars in the POS at the end of the day. We also discovered that 5 bottles were missing.
Event Day 3:
After much thought, we anticipated that the demand is already waning as we had already reached out to most of our customer base. To resolve this problem, we discussed with Soi 55 about bringing in new flavours, namely Coffee and Honey Green Tea. With this decision, the POS system had to be updated to show the new flavours.
On Day 3, we finished setting up the booth much earlier than the previous 2 days probably because we were more familiar with what to do. However, after we pushed the POS system up from the fixtures room, we found that the POS system was updated with the new flavours but not with our bundle pricing. We had to transport the POS back down for updating with Miss Choo. The POS system was bulky and heavy and this update took up some of our time. We managed to get back and start our event before 10.30am.
Slight changes were made to prevent discrepancies between sales amount and sales quantity of the old school snacks. A sales memo was used to record whenever old school snacks were sold. This helped us to keep track of the stocks we had and made the tallying of cash with the stocks easier.
There was also an improvement as there was only a 50 cents discrepancy and 1 bottle missing.
Conclusion:
Despite all the setbacks and issues, the whole team put in their best efforts and we learnt lots of lessons through this event. We has hands-on practice of how an event should be run and with this experience, we will be able to combat future events with more preparation. At the end of the event, we had a sales figures of $2,960. The team saw improvements day by day as we faced the worst circumstances and we learnt to make better decisions bit by bit. We have definitely grown in our thinking processes. The team members each have their own respective strengths which contributed greatly to the roadshow. All in all, we have bonded well as a team and it was an amazing TEP experience for everyone.
Yours truly,
Team 3
