A Tree-mendous Christmas Affair
Date: 12 December 2016
Time: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.Venue: Block A, Level 2, Outside D'Studio
Background
It was an exciting time for the retail students as they set up their booth for the Retail Entrepreneurship fair. The fair is a unique opportunity for these students to apply their knowledge to a real life scenario. For the first time, the fair involved a fundraising component for two charities; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Movement for the Intellectually Disabled for Singapore (MINDS). There were other merchants like Lumiex and NYP Streetwear & Drawstring to donate their proceeds to these charities.
Objective
Our objective is to raise awareness and attract people to this event, and we accomplished through the distribution of flyers and posters. We provided retail students fixtures for their booths and accommodated to their requests to the best we can. Furthermore, being associated with corporate social responsibility, we aimed to raise funds through the sales of drawstring bags for charity organisations WWF and MINDS.
Our Roles
We were tasked to assist in the event, in different departments such as Advertising and Publicity (A&P), Logistics and Finance. A&P came up with posters to publicise the event and hand-made decorations to liven the event area, logistics managed the required fixtures and laid out the floorplans, and finance came up with budget proposal and sales target.
Handmade decorations by Team 2 to depict our theme “Tree-mendous”
OUR FIRST TIME DOING A Q-POLE POSTER!!
Pre-Event
Prior to the event, our team placed more focus on the Advertising & Publicity activities as it required more manpower - designing of posters, doing up the christmas decorations and raising awareness for our event by going around the campus to give out flyers and put up posters. Not forgetting Finance & Logistics, we set aside a budget, a sales target and coordinated with the lecturers and retail students for logistic matters.
In the midst of creating decorations..
Event Day
Our team reported to the EMRS room early on the bright and sunny day at 8.30 a.m. Priority goes to our retail students so we started moving the super heavy tables and arranged the retail booth fixtures for them; which were all set up before 10 a.m as per planned. Continuing on, we set up our remaining CSR booths and decoration for the event till 11 a.m. The setup wasn’t as smooth as we would have hoped, but we managed to get the event running on time.
NYP Streetwear & Drawstring booth being set up.
This was the front entrance of our event. To create a grand entrance, we specifically put a sign on the christmas tree and gingerbread man to notify customers that our event is being held inside
Setting up of the Redemption counter
Liaising with participating CSR Booths (Streetwear & Drawstring)
Public Reactions
After the event area was set up, we executed publicity stunts to create social buzz. We went around in our Santa and hand-made Gingerbread-men costumes to give out flyers and interact with the public. Phones were taken out to take snapshots of our Santa and Gingerbread-men, and many of them was eager to take photo with them as they went around the school.
Our OIC (Darwyn) and Arjun dressed up as Santa Claus promoting our event by giving out event flyers
Setting up the sound system
To create a lively and festive atmosphere, we used the sound system. Christmas songs and latest hits were played (we literally played ‘Closer by The Chainsmokers’ 20 times) and students were allowed to promote their own retail booths. To add onto the atmosphere before passersby are able to hear the music, we pasted paper snowflakes on the glass doors to give off the Christmas feel. In the midst of setting up, we encountered difficulties as we did not know which cables were supposed to connected to which parts. However, with some help, we successfully set up the sound system before 11 a.m.
These are the 4 retail booths - HandPicked, Moonlight, LeMascs and Style:U that we helped to set up. They also prepared their Visual Merchandising decorations and were ready for sales by 11am. However, there were slight hiccups which we managed to overcome. An example of this would be when one team stuck their poster to the wall, which is not allowed. Thus we provided them with an aisle stand for them to showcase their poster.
NYP Streetwear & Drawstring was manned by EMRS Team 2, we were allocated into different shifts for cashiering
To attract more people to our event, we also had a redemption booth whereby students/staff had to present their flyers in exchange for sweet
Retail students promoting their booths
Shoppers at different booths
Improvisation of clothing design
After Event
When the event ended at 5pm, we carried out the closing process for all the booths. Our team split the responsibilities and proceeded with our duties. The finance team carried out a stocktake for the CSR booth (Drawstring and Streetwear) to record the stock status after the event sales before handing over the remaining stocks to D’ Studio. This is to ensure that there is no discrepancy in the sales and float amount. The team removed the posters that were placed at various locations and christmas decorations. Also, removing the fixtures before returning them back to the logistics room.
Closing Stocktake process
Returning the fixtures to EMRS logistics room
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the event was a success. We managed to attract crowds to the Retail Entrepreneurship Fair and thus the sales for our Retail and CSR booths was substantial.
Everyone went home happily, with the gifts in hand, just in the nick of time for the holiday festivity while vendors cheered on their achieving their sales targets. For EMRS Team 2, it had been a long and weary day but was no doubt an exciting occasion to apply their ideas to a real-world setting and help raise some funds for good samaritans such as the WWF & MINDS. Perhaps, more importantly, we made memories fostering a spirit of good teamwork and communication.
