Tuesday, July 19, 2016

EMRS Team 3 Mini Roadshow: Sweet Treats

Date : 29th June - 1st July 2016
Venue : Outside Koufu
Time :  10:30AM - 3:30PM

Preparation

We had been planning for our roadshow 3 weeks before the actual event. Our team had 2 OICs - Vanessa and Claudia, 2 Logistic ICs - Li Ling and Roxanne, 2 A&P ICs - Phyu and Liyan and 2 Finance ICs - Arinah and Yong Jie. Over the past 3 weeks, our preparation encompassed of planning the theme, setting the dates and number of days of our roadshow and sourcing for potential vendors whereby we were faced with several rejections.

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(Our team went on a field trip to source for vendors)

After identifying Crusty Oven as one of our potential vendors, we visited Crusty Oven to have a look at the tarts, cakes and cookies offered at the store. Once we had tasted the tarts for ourselves, we decided they were delicious and decided  to bring in Crusty Oven as one of our vendors!  
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(Our team visiting Crusty Oven)

Finally, we were able to successfully secure 2 vendors, Arizona Tea and Crusty Oven, which sells delicious brewed tea in cans and freshly baked tarts and cookies respectively. We then started out on our advertising and promotional materials to publicize our event!

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(Flyers for our pre-order event and cutting “sweet treats” from the styrofoam board)

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(Our hardworking team members working on the A&P materials!)

Pre-Orders

Days before the actual event, we wanted to spread the news! Our team left our work spaces and combed every corner within the campus! Distributing pre-order forms and offering samples of the yummy cookies which we were selling to passers-by. We left a smile on their faces as they kept coming back for more.
Early birds get the freshest out of the oven and best deals! We gave a promotion with every 2 jars of cookies bought and offered free delivery. Naturally, the sales achieved over the pre-order period was amazing. We were very close from hitting half of the sales target!


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(Samples of the cookies were provided from our vendor!)


During Event

Day 1 - 29th June 2016

It is finally the first day of our mini roadshow! We were excited about running our very first event in EMRS. We reported at 8.30am to commence setting up our booth outside Koufu. We took down our props, including the Arizona Can mascot and cookie mascot, from the EMRS room. According to the manpower allocation, we took the equipment we needed from the Logistics Room, set up the A&P at our booth and collected goods from our vendors, Crusty Oven and Arizona cans from Foodgle.


Team members setting up the booth!
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(We finished setting up our booth)

The Crusty Oven team sorted out the preorder goods to be delivered and the mobile selling teams went on to deliver them to our customers before commencing our mobile sales while the booth team got ready to start sales at the booth. We started sales at 10.30am.

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(There is already a crowd!)

We targeted Staff for mobile selling for Crusty Oven products while for Arizona we went to various TEP centres and canteens to hard sell. We found that mobile selling for Crusty Oven’s individual cookies were more efficient.


The turnover for Arizona cans were faster than Crusty Oven’s cookies, slices of cake and cinnamon egg tarts. The most popular Arizona drinks flavours were Green Tea with Ginseng and Honey and Half Iced Tea Half Lemonade. We had to make a trip back to Foodgle to restock the Arizona drinks as they ran out faster than expected. We also collected more ice from Foodgle to ensure that our drinks are kept chilled for our customers.

It was more challenging to sell the jar cookies as compared to individual cookies as it is more expensive and many customers had already pre-ordered the jars. We targeted students for our individual cookies as we thought it will fit better with any budget they might have.

At 3.30pm, we started packing up and bringing our props and leftover cookie packets, jars and Arizona cans back to the EMRS room for stock count. We also returned the equipment we took from the Logistics Room. We decided to pack the pre-ordered goods to be delivered the next day so that delivery will be more efficient on our second day.


(Sorting out the pre-ordered goods for our 2nd day)

Day 2 - 30th June 2016

On the second day of our roadshow, we also arrived at 8.30am to start our set up. As we have already familiarised ourselves with the setting up process, we took a shorter period of time to set up the A&P at our booth as compared to the first day.

Even though the human traffic was lesser compared to the day one, the turnover for Arizona Can drinks were pretty fast. Similarly to day one, we had to return to Foodgle a few times to collect more Arizona Cans and ice.
(Where we stored our Arizona Cans)

Our non-consignment goods: individual cookies, Cinnamon Egg tarts and Pound cakes also ran out fast and were sold out by 12.30pm as we brought in lesser quantities. We also sold out all of our packets of cookies by 3.30pm.


At 3.30pm, we started packing up and bringing our props and leftover cookie jars and Arizona cans back to the EMRS room for stock count. Concurrently, part of the team returned the equipment we took from the Logistics Room back to their designated areas. We could not prepare the pre-ordered goods to be delivered the next day as we did not have any packets of cookies left.

Day 3 - 1st July 2016

On the last day of our roadshow, there were repeating customers from day 1 or 2 who dropped by our booth to get cookies again. The crowd was better as compared to day 1 and 2 and surprisingly, the popularity of Arizona Tea did not die down although it was already the third day of our roadshow! This time round, our team collected a larger quantity of stocks from Foodgle as compared to day 1 and 2 and managed to sell all of them before the end of our roadshow.

On top of that, Cinnamon Egg tarts and Pound cakes also ran out fast and were sold out within a few hours as soon as we opened our booth. This could also be possibly due to the lesser amount of quantities which we have brought in. Subsequently, our team members proceeded with the mobile selling of the cookies to lecturers and students in the campus.

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Post Event

By 3.30pm, we had finished selling all our goods from Crusty Oven and Arizona Can drinks, hence we proceeded to dismantle the booth with our Supervisor, Ms Winnie’s permission. Yay!

(Duct tape was pasted over the menu for products which were sold out!)

We threw away our Arizona Can mascot, cookie mascot and booth decorations. We returned the poles to its original condition by tearing off the duct tape we pasted to secure the poles to the table. We brought the remaining props, the fairy lights, back to the EMRS room and returned the equipment we took from the Logistics Room. We cleaned up the water around the area where our Arizona Cans were stored and returned the booth area to its original condition.



Conclusion

On the whole, through the preparation and execution of this mini roadshow, we believe EMRS have led us all to be more outspoken and demonstrative individuals. As a team, we have learnt to communicate and work together efficiently after all our time together.

We have developed both our marketing and creativity skills in the visual marketing and direct marketing departments. In addition, we have learnt to budget when it comes to managing costs and money in general, coming up with our sales target and deciding on how we would distribute our Advertising & Promotion allowance. We have also gone through the entire process of event planning, such as discussing as a team, looking for vendors, thinking of possible advertising, promoting the event and actually executing the event. Our team then came together at the end of the event to come up with the AAR (After Action Review). Our team has honed important lifelong and operational skills such as forging friendships and coming up with a floorplan respectively.

In conclusion, the mini roadshow was a great experience for all of us. We managed to hit our sales target of $2,000 and even exceeded it! We worked well as a team and it was a meaningful time for all of us as our team became more bonded through this roadshow. Because of the time spent in EMRS, we have an even more in-depth understanding the various aspects which we have to consider when organising an event. We will like to thank Ms Winnie Quek for giving us much support and advice throughout the planning and execution of the roadshow.