Wei Xiang

MiE Ended

In the blink of an eye, my MiE journey has come to a close.

What I planned to learn - To start up something from scratch and see it through and knowing how to start a business.

What I learned - Customer feedback, difficulty of procurement, need for contingencies, disappointments from ideal situations, failure happens, importance of data collection, Social Media Marketing, clinching opportunities

What I plan to do moving on - A break for now, ideations again sometime in future and perhaps begin another startup bearing the lessons learned.

The final Presentation was a good chance for us to display what we have done to the rest of our batch and also to the next batch, encouraging peer-to-peer learning while we explored the different businesses, evaluated for ourselves what can be done better on various aspects from cross validation.

I learned a lot from the whole journey. Even though the MiE journey has come to an end, the learning and entrepreneurship journey will always remain ongoing.

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

THOUGHTS ONE MONTH PRIOR TO FINAL PRESENTATION

As I passed Xi Wen the last Rainbow Coloured Metal Straw to fulfil an order on Carousell today, there were some thoughts which passed through my mind. I realised that it has been a surreal journey, something which I never would have started on my own because I really needed that push in order to start something.

It's been close to 5 months of journey with my group which I only knew after the Batch 47 MiE Showcase Night. Never could I have imagined that I would have been able to work with an entirely new group of people to achieve a profit making startup. It was a journey filled with constant agreements and disagreements, the voila moments when we finally discovered what we should be doing after a whole month of rejection of our ideas either by each other or by Prof. Eventually the Idea got accepted. We started from one product, moved on to multiple products and achieved considerable sales. There was some setbacks however, when three of our booths made negligible profit. But through this we learned the hardships of entrepreneurship. Sometimes you don't have a take home salary, sometimes you even make losses. (luckily we didn't cash wise but opportunity cost wise we did.)

Prior to this, I already saw the MiE brochure at NTU's Open House in 2015 and I told myself yes, I wanted to go for the MiE if I got my place in the University. At my Freshman Year, I met with a setback when applying for the Winter spot as I realised that one of the lessons would coincide with my core module which happened during the recess week and I was so fearful I could not take up the MiE program. Alas, choosing between summer exchange, summer internship and MiE has been a tough choice and I am really thankful that I embarked on this journey.

I know the journey through entrepreneurship is tough but I am really thankful that I have met this team of very supportive friends who really go through thick and thin for this course. I hope the remaining journey through this Business Venture Implementation Course would be smooth sailing and we really look forward to presenting our final presentation as it would really be the FINALE for the close to one year journey in MiE (Surprise Surprise It's Been [close to] A Year!!!!)

Let's all soldier on into the hall of fame for MiE Batch 48/49. [aka final Presentation]

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

P.S. will be cleaning up the previous posts soon!!

Post Consultation with Prof Roderick and Prof Adrian

Today we presented what we have done and what we would be doing moving on with our professors. They were very encouraging to us and commended us. This was a feeling that was really heartening as I really didn't expect to actually have been able to move forward with the business so much. We made a 40% profit off our initial investment and it was a feat which I never could have imagined achieving. Of course this would not be possible without the consistent effort put in by the team and I really appreciate all the work which my team and I have put into EcoTumble.

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Giveaway on Instagram Ended

Our giveaway on Instagram had officially ended today, we had a total of 20 new followers and 7 comments on the giveaway post. It was not that bad given it was our first time doing it. of the 7 about 4 were organic comments which does imply that we did make quite some impact. It could have been done much better though. Perhaps we might have wanted to do a paid version of advertising to really bump our post up. That was something at that point which did not cross my mind and could have been better thought out.

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Thoughts After The La Kopi Event

I was at the La Kopi Event with the team on 26 and 27 January. The La Kopi Event was rather lukewarm compared to what we had expected about people who consume coffee also wanting to consume eco-friendly alternatives to one use paper cups. We couldn't have been more wrong.

On Day 2, there was Almost no one at all, Perhaps these booth things are really marketing channels instead of sales channels, which is actually what we are doing this time. We have the giveaway and all, it is very confusing and messy. This is something which we could have given more thought if we had a booth again.

We realise that it was really pointless to keep transferring the wheat cup around as there was hardly any sales in wheat cup to begin with. Therefore, sales above 10$ get free wheat cup, it's too much to transfer the cup around. We made a choice to do this to ensure that we will not waste the effort to carry around.

We received feedback on the bowl it's not leakproof, if it is convenience we wanted to sell it doesnt make sense?

On Day 3, there was no sales at the end portion, we did have a chitchat with some of the vendors and they confirmed that yes it is marketing for them, quite a few of them are startups doing partnerships with active SG and all and they sell to the corporate setting. Maybe this would be something we could explore if we were to run other startups and booths in the future.

Something we really learned. Resilience, being able to bite that bullet even though the situation was a loss, we relish in the silver lining, its the littlest joys like this which really tell me entrepreneurship is really worth it.

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Giveaway on Instagram Begins

It's 9pm, It's Instagram Hour, Let the Giveaway begin!!!! Do check out our main blog for update on the Instagram GIVEAWAY!!! That's all for now, really hoping it goes well!!! (It should, we really did give it quite some thought during our discussions.) Let's try to hit 300 followers from this!

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

A New Semester Begins

It's finally semester 2, we were doing well during the holidays, this time, our marketing would move more towards the school side as it would be very difficult to keep travelling. We will keep hustling and make this a business that we will look back onto in the future and say to ourselves, we did it.

Wei Xiang ^^

Discussion with NTU Student Union and NTU Echo Initiative

We are currently in talks with the Student Union President to help us join NTU's Campus Initiative on living the Eco-Friendly lifestyle! It is a half Annual event which champions sustainability and eco-friendly living in NTU. Personally I would feel that this would be really useful as a win-win both to the school in promoting eco-friendly lifestyle and ourselves also promoting the same lifestyle. I am confident of this partnership as our ideals are largely congruent with the school-wide beliefs.

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Event at JCU Complete

Well guess what, our event at JCU was completed. I wasn't able to be physically there to support the roadshow as I was still on my internship. Nevertheless I am glad we managed to coordinate it well with the organisers and my team members. It was definitely a job well done on our part. The sales may not have been that high, but I'm glad we have made an impact!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Surprise on Instagram!!

Well okay maybe not exactly a surprise, it was kind of deliberate but we didn't really expect it to really work out when people were directed from the booth to the Instagram Account. Guess Instagram use really worked out a bit and we are starting to get a bit of people enquiring through Instagram DM. So excited that the Instagram Channel is starting to work out!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Marketing Prep for the Green Event at JCU!!

I should be getting the Event Poster from the Event Team at JCU soon. So Excited I hope you are too!! Liaising with external parties got to be one of the more interesting things that we have gotten to do so far. I am glad that we are on this journey of entrepreneurship together. It's been a great year starting out on the minor in entrepreneurship and I am looking forward to following through till the end of our journey!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Discussion ongoing at Going to green Event at JCU

As mentioned previously, we were approached at the last few hours of our booth by an Events and Conference Lecturer at James Cook University (Ms Pamela Wildheart), for us to set up our booth at an event organised for her course at JCU by her students. I am currently liaising with her and 3 students who are wholly in charge of this event (Get Green Go!)

Wei Xiang ^^

Day 1 at the booth (Marketing and Reflections)

What a tiring day, it was a long day for me at the booth.

Marketing:

Let's begin with some marketing aspects. This was mainly done through our Instagram account.

While we were swatting mosquitoes while waiting for a few customers to arrive, here is what has happened on the Instagram account. We currently have a follower count of 150, which is not too shabby given the nature of just using organic follow for follows. Last night I did up a story to tell the followers on where our booth is (Pic 1). This would ensure that our followers wouldn't get lost it they came.

Pic 2 Depicted our products which are available at this roadshow. As previously discussed, there was a need for more products. Since we had not explicitly told everyone about what other things we held, I thought that this would be a good time to do this

Pic 3 tells the customers to hasten and come, Pic 4 shows some kind of demand and pic 5 is also to rush the customers to come. Perhaps it did contribute slightly to today perhaps it didn't. There is a probability the customers would rush down tomorrow to make their final purchases.

Pic 6 showed a thank you message for everyones support. As much as we might not have been that successful, I felt it would not be right to tell the customers that there is a major lack of demand in what we sold. So let's cut ourselves some slack. The fact we managed to make a few sales was already a considerable effort. This was the first time we all ran a booth and it might not have turned out as easy as expected. I really respect all the vendors who always do all this without fail. There's more thought which we can think through next time.

Personal Reflections for the Day:

On to my personal reflections for the day. We had nothing moving in the first two hours where I was at the booth. What was the reason? Was it because we have nothing that is glaringly customer oriented? Was it because we had too little on display? Did we overdiversify? Was it the weather?

There was just too many possible factors which caused everything to go wrong. Many people were turning heads and taking a look, when they saw the price they walked away. Was that the key factor? We would probably never know unless we asked or tried lowering the price. Personally I would try to suggest lowering the price of products which did not even move at all. This is so as to get rid of what we do not need as it will not make sense to keep the products to sell for another day. (I am thankful my cautious teammates warned to order less to test the market, if they had acceded to my claim to go for more gains, we would have made a maximum loss.)

Perhaps what Mr Roderick said about letting people see the product then confirm it's there would work out. Let's all hustle and hope that Day 2 would be much better. ^^

"Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn"

It was an expensive lesson but sometimes we have to take this fall to bounce even higher!

Cheers!! ^^

Wei Xiang ^^

Missing in Action for the next 5 days

I would be away (and possibly uncontactable) for the next 5 days as I would be going for reservist. I have informed my team members accordingly and I'm thankful that they are largely supportive of me going for my reservist. I will be posting one more post on the Instagram today before leaving for reservist tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to our booth selling out on Saturday! First thing when I reach home on Friday, it is to really get everything ready! It's going to be hectic but we'll keep on going.

Wei Xiang ^^

Only Within Singapore

Today we received an online order on the order form and a weird number was given, it does not seem like the person is in Singapore. I acknowledge that it might be something I missed on the Instagram to mention an ONLY IN SINGAPORE! Sometimes things might pop out in business and it might be out of what we have preempted. As prevention is better than cure, added an extra line of ONLY IN SINGAPORE on the Instagram bio, where the link to our order form lies.

Wei Xiang ^^

Product Mix for the booth

As the day of our booth approaches around the corner. I gave it some thought and we definitely need to set KPIs before going ahead with booth planning. For myself, I want our campaign which we do to be of value to us, so there needs to be at least $1000 of potential profit off the booth. We have met this roadblock of deciding whether to pour our money into another batch of STOJO.

These days I did a lot of thinking and I realise STOJO is really unsustainable. The lowest price which our supplier offered to us for a bulk order was significantly lower than the rate we are ordering at due to the small amount being ordered. Looking at it, the supplier is getting more profit per cup than we are, and he is taking on a much lower risk than we are. I feel uncomfortable continuing on this product with this supplier as it really seems like we are getting the much shorter end of the stick. At the end of the day is it really meaningful to carry on with exclusively doing STOJO Cups for them? I doubt so. I would personally want to push out a product line and a product mix of expensive and cheap cups and other collapsibles like we have proposed in the business plan presentation. It's really painful to see our money go out, come back in and go out again and we are bearing a significant portion of the risk, we need to go back to the preorders form and do it for Valentines the next time if we are pushing one more time. This venture has become really controlled by the current product that we have on us and we seem to just be retailers for this brand which is already established and this role that I'm doing is really having some sort of dissonance as there is nothing much I can do to adjust the brand.

The stress level is significantly increased this week as we need to firm up on something by this weekend before I go for my mandatory weeklong vacation in an SAF camp (Reservist).

Let me end off with a strong quote, I hope if anyone reads this, don't get me wrong, I'm just really putting in a lot of thought and its a flurry of emotions and thoughts.

"When the going gets tough, the tough gets going!"

Let us continue and strive our way and we won't have to hope it will turn out well. We will plan it out well!

Cheers

Wei Xiang ^^

Random Thoughts When Making Carousell Deliveries

As of today, I would have personally made 4 carousell deliveries. It is rather interesting that it took one and half hours for me to make a round trip from my internship place back home to the delivery location and back home for 2 of the deliveries done yesterday. Tonight it would be another 2 to deliver later at two different locations. My random thought is that when this scales up, it might become an issue. It might be convenient now that we are in the school holidays, but there has to be some other more sustainable way to be doing the deliveries. Partnership discussions has been put on hold on my side as it is getting kind of messy and it doesn't seem like our current distributors care about achieving a win-win situation. (Something as simple as requesting a sample to seal a long term partnership was ignored.) Nevertheless, we need to start sourcing for more sustainable means to this as hand delivery certainly isn't worth just less than $10 per transaction. There is not really much effort on our side to convert these customers into recurring customers. What else can we do in order to make even more profit and impact, yet does not take up too much time. These are things which I can mention to the group when we sit down and discuss.

Is it possible our sales is just like on some ecstasy because it happens to be the Christmas season is the trend? Will we have continued support from our audience? Only time will tell and till then we really need to capitalise on this seasonal opportunity we have as the next one will likely to only come during valentines period. (Doubt there's much we can do about CNY since we are not really doing something that would really be festive for CNY.)

That's all the thoughts for today, thank you to those who stayed to read everything!! ^^

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

My Thoughts for the Booth

As our sales got more and more, we have a lot of stocks which are depleted, which led me to think on our $110 spent on the booth at *SCAPE. Will we be getting our money's worth? Assuming that each of us is about $10 an hour and we do 10 hours each for 2 days. This would amount to a total of $1110 worth of opportunity cost from setting up the booth. Will we be able to profit in a manner such that we earn more than $1110? This might seem a bit trivial but when time is really not on our side, we need to see if we even have enough products to line the table so that we will be able to earn a profit which supersedes $1110.

That's all for today! Hopefully we'll have ideas when we discuss this week as it might take a while for the orders to come in. Time is not on our side but let's pull through it!

Cheers!!

Wei Xiang ^^

Establishing Strategic Partnerships

I have contacted the Student Union to negotiate a potential partnership with them. Other people to be contacted will be Echo Initiative and Earthlink. Besides these, we will be trying to do whatsapp blasts to students in the student clubs to tell them about the exciting promotion which is ongoing for our cups.

Some of the clubs we would try is likely to be through personal membership in the clubs first.

I will need to prepare a good email and craft messages to really see if we can blast through existing channels.

Wei Xiang ^^

Post Consultation Thoughts

We had our consultation today with our instructor Mr Roderick and Lily from Mediafreaks. It seemed that a lot of the marketing which has been done was already done right. Initially I was kind of sad that the marketing did not really pick up. Am kind of happy that I managed to confirm that our marketing is somewhat on the right check. Moving on, we will use Instagram mainly for awareness and lead generation instead of just trying to post to only make sales. The branding might not have appeared to be strong and we might have just gotten lucky for the first round. Nevertheless we will press on and with much more thought put into launching our second product (or sacrificial product), we would be able to create even more impact on our Earth.

I'm really excited on our upcoming partnerships and consignments which we are going to put into the pipeline soon and I'm sure that we would be able to achieve STOCKOUT soon (though its best not to, we will ensure our supply chain goes on.)

Wei Xiang ^^

New Sales Channel

I've met up with an acquaintance who runs a marketing agency. I managed to do a win-win negotiation where we would give a certain percentage of the revenue for products which are sold through the agency. This arrangement is risk free in nature as advertising cost is only incurred when the sales are made. Although this may reduce our margin by a bit, I am confident that it would be a favourable arrangement as what we need is not just to get a high margin. We need exposure, to really get to the customer so as to maximise our impact that we can make. Businesses aren't just about getting the highest profit margin. It is always about making favourable connections and always going to achieve that win-win for all parties. This is one way to really keep it sustainable in the long run. Moving on, this can be a basis which we can work on for future partnerships with student clubs, as according to the marketing plan which we originally set out on.

We will be monitoring the various channels which we have and see which ones actually bring in more sales, which would mean a higher likelihood of us having impacted change in the reduction of the use of plastics.

On a sidenote, exam is over, it is time to hustle on! I am looking forward to what the winter holidays entails and am excited that I embarked on this journey with the team!

Wei Xiang ^^

Next Digital Marketing Tool

Hello EcoTumble fans, I'm back with a new digital marketing tool. No guessing, it is Facebook. After realising that our Instagram had somewhat little followers despite being in operation for quite a while, I went on to explore what could have possibly gone wrong. I realised that Instagram business profiles are usually linked to a Facebook Page for increased credibility. Perhaps the business profile may have looked kind of dubious. Thus the next marketing tool which we will be using is to develop the social media presence on Facebook as well. How I would go about it is to ask people to follow the Facebook Page using the invite friends function. Will be asking the rest of the team to do it in due time as well. Of course that would require the page to be specially curated first. This is the current link to the Facebook Page. Some technical and security issues limits the editing at the moment. https://www.facebook.com/EcoTumble/ It's close to exams, but EcoTumble will never close.

By the way this is the link to our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ecotumble/

Cheers and all the best to all for the exams!

Wei Xiang ^^

Update on Marketing Efforts

Using the follow-unfollow method, we have currently only amassed 71 followers on Instagram. Even though it may not have been organic followers there, it does show that the single picture which got posted seemed to have an effect on the audience to some extent. Moving on with this we would be doing Bi-Weekly posts on Wednesdays and Saturdays to build up to our pre-sales launch on 1 Dec. Wednesday was chosen as a date because I thought of the midweek blues that people might face and they have a high likelihood of scrolling Instagram that day. Saturday was chosen over Sunday as it is not a work day but its also still like not work but semi work day. I have read somewhere that people tend not to scroll Instagram on Sunday as they tend to not want to appear like they do not have a Sunday life. The postings will be done between 9pm-11pm, which is typically the end of the day for University Students and they are more likely to have time to scroll Instagram and see our posts. The following is a summary of how it will be built up:

• 17 Nov: Something Green is Coming to You!!
• 21 Nov: It's Getting Nearer!!
• 24 Nov: Brace yourselves for a EcoFriendlier Life Style
• 28 Nov: Presenting to you the Collapsible Tumbler. Pre-orders open in 3 days!
• 1 Dec: Pre-orders post (Discounted Price) (1-14 Dec)
• 5 Dec: Pre-orders are ongoing get one before you miss it!
• 8 Dec: We're halfway through we've hit XXX pre-orders. What are you waiting for jump onto the green lifestyle bandwagon today!
• 12 Dec: Last 3 Days for the Pre-orders
• 15 Dec: Pre-orders Ending in an Hour, grab your EcoTumble soon

That's all from me for now! Hope that it will be a success!!

Cheers

Wei Xiang ^^

Brand Identity

After our discussion today, having a roadshow was put into the pipeline. The next step was to see what identity we would want to have. Being in the public eye, public perception of our business (how serious it is) is crucial. As such, I proposed a having a brand identity. Originally what I had in mind was an EcoTumble T-shirt, but after discussion with the team and realising that our roadshow might be only happening a few times, it might not make sense to have a shirt specially just for the brand. Therefore, we decided to settle along the lines of wearing colours similar to nature. This will be in line with our branding to protect the environment.

Pre-Orders

I realised during the meeting with the suppliers that there is significant risk if we have too much holding stock and we might have cashflow issues. Therefore, to alleviate that risk, I suggested to have a preorder form to collect sentiments as well as reach a minimum order quantity before we actually ordered. This decreases the risk on holding the product as we would be doing a model of business operations known as "drop-shipping".

We are expecting to open up the preorders in December in line with our marketing strategy which would build up to the preorder opening date. I am sure that this would be a success!

Prioritising Marketing Efforts

Back during the Business Plan Presentation, it was mentioned by one of our classmates that we might have too many marketing efforts ongoing, we might get overwhelmed, and it might also appear to consumers that they might just be paying for our marketing efforts. Therefore, as CMO, I looked into it and would like to place more emphasis on the more important marketing efforts in our marketing mix.

The Marketing Strategies we presented in the Business Plan Presentation was as follow:

• Product: Collapsible Tumbler, Collapsible Straw, Reusable Drink Sleeve Bag
• Price: Everyday Low Price, Psychological Pricing, Bundle Pricing
• Place: Consignment at stores, Website
• Promotion: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, SEO, Festive Specials, Roadshows, Influencer Marketing

Looking at this plans, the rationale was to really get our product out to our target consumers.

After streamlining the marketing strategies. I have modified the marketing strategies to the following:

• Product: Core Product - Collapsible Tumbler | Augmented Product - Reusable Drink Sleeve Bag

• Price: Everyday Low Price | Psychological Pricing

• Place: Consignment at stores | Website

• Promotion: Instagram | Facebook | Roadshows | SEO | Influencer Marketing

Reflections from The Business PLans which are Shared

Watching the presentations of the 6 other groups really invoked a lot of thought in me.

• frond sells terrariums.
• Fruits & Nuts sells health.
• MyAdFriend sells an Advertisement Service.
• Chop Chop sells convenience.
• Oh Culture sells culture.
• HallO sells convenience.

It really invoked a lot of thought in me, what was it exactly that we were selling? Were we just selling a collapsible tumbler? Were we selling environmentalism? After much thinking, I realise what we sold was a lifestyle of minimal waste. It was a mindset in consumers which we have to change and thus we need to tailor our marketing efforts in that directions. That said, I need to bear in mind especially for the social media posts to be consistently perpetuating the importance of waste minimisation.

Reflections from Ideation Stage

Our group had really been through many ideas since the start of the MiE Journey. I joined this group sometime in week 4. It was at first kind of scary to form up with people I did not know, but I am thankful I did. We went through a whirlwind of ideas from a corporate gift box, to providing tours for exchange students, eco-friendly bags, e-commerce, and the list went on and on and on...

What I feel was an important lesson is that we need to all keep in the same direction. We needed to achieve a mutual consensus in order for the idea to work out. If there was one member in the group who would not be keen to see through the idea, it would definitely have to be scrapped. Part and parcel of working with a team is being able to accept others opinions as well as share our opinions transparently with one another.

I am thankful that we ended up with deciding on an idea eventually on collapsible tumblers which also aligns with the green initiatives which are currently happening all over the world. Really humbled to be part of this movement as well and hope that at the end of the venture, we do not just rake in profits but also create a powerful social impact as well!