I have taken what my team members have posted on the blog regarding a reflection and created our team reflection document. This includes the posts that have all been put up on the blog from my team mates and my own thoughts also.
Reflection
Document – Team 53: Ecoglo
Natalie
Crawford
Maddie
Barnett
Michelle
Francombe
Shem
Dela Cruz Baua
Matthew
Curran
Popularity
of our Stall:
For the market day our stall was very popular.
We were very surprised at the start of market day as we started getting
sales at about 10 am. We ended up having to stop selling the candles and
telling people to come back at 11 when the market actually started as we were
already selling out. We were so surprised and flattered that our product
was so popular with everyone. We ended up putting our prices up as well as we
wanted them to begin cheap because we didn't know how much people
were willing to pay. We had a range of prices, some were 2 tokens some were 3
and some were 4. The bigger ones were 4, wood and concrete mostly. The
day of market day our idea and execution did live up to our expectations we do
admit we were really surprised at how popular our product was. In the
end, we sold every holder that we had made (roughly 75) and received around 180
tokens and 10 voting tokens.
Effort vs Return:
We all believe that the effort we put into this
assignment was definitely validated by selling out at the market day. By the
time the market came we had made roughly 15 holders each, all out of a variety
of materials. We tried to be economic when we could but in the end the process
did cost a bit of money and time. Leading up to the market, we were worried all
our efforts would be for nothing, and that our product wouldn’t sell well –
although we all loved them personally. The wooden, clay and concrete ones
especially involved a lot of craftsmanship and elbow grease. When we had sold
nearly half our stock by 11am at the market, we realised that we had a really
popular product and were restored with confidence. We were forced to up our
prices to last the duration of the market, but still sold all 75 holders 20
minutes from the end of the day.
Currency:
As we have stated, we had some issues deciding
on how to price our product and predict how popular our holders would be. At
the very beginning of the assignment, we had low confidence and were only planning to charge a
token each for our product. As we made more and more holders and they became of
a higher quality, we realised we were better off constructing a slightly
smaller amount, as we could charge more for each holder due to craftsmanship
and materials. At the beginning of the market we were charging 2 tokens for the
smaller holders and 3 tokens for the larger ones. We were selling out very fast
so ended up re-evaluating this to 3 tokens for the smaller ones and 4 for the
larger. We still sold our product well and ended up making $190 from our 75
holders.
Group Functioning:
We all believe our group worked really well as a team for
this assignment. In the lead-up to the Market Place event our group
mostly communicated through a Facebook page between our classes to make
sure everything was running smoothly. Instead of people being expected to do
their own thing, we designated tasks for each of us to complete by a certain
date, which worked really well in keeping everyone happy and busy! The set up
the night before went smoothly as we had a clear idea of what we wanted our
stall to look like. Each of us had brought in our own candle holders that we
had created along with other items to create our stall aesthetic. The Market
Day itself went really well, we each spent some time behind the stall. For the
majority of the time it was either Shem and Michelle, or Natalie and Maddie,
but the time went really fast, especially the first hour with the rush of
people so we all hanged around for a while!
Working in a Team:
We believe as a group
collective we have learnt many things about ourselves, the process and how it
is to produce one product as a group. We believe that as a team we worked quite
well, not only in terms of communicating with each other and making sure that
everyone was aware of what was happening, so that we all progressed throughout
the process as a group, rather than individuals working at different
stages/paces of the assignment. The only downside of working in a team we found
from such a broad 2nd year cohort would be everyone’s
schedules- we always made it a point to set up weekly meetings so everyone can
keep on track. However with everyone being under different majors sometimes it
was quite difficult to get everyone together, especially when it came to around
hand-in time for our other papers.
Audience Response to our Stall:
Although we couldn’t quite have the dimly lit sanctuary
space that customers could walk into and immerse themselves in our product that
we had initially idealized, we were happy with the way we dressed our stall. It
looked organic and eco, while looking clean and professional. When customers
approached our stall, they were drawn to our full table, and we believe the
tablecloth and wooden crates helped sell our product. The fairy lights adding
to the extra illumination that we had in the stall, and our large banner told
people who we were. Customers seemed to respond positively to our stall, and we
believe we would not have sold as well, had we not arranged/decorated our stall
accordingly. We took photographs of all our happy customers at our stall with
their new holders and photographs documenting the sell out.
Natalie Crawford
