Aileen Laksmono
This journey definitely has not been a smooth sailing one,
but the difficulty we face are definitely life lessons
that I treasure.
Hope to get more responses from clubs
Contacted NTUSU via email to follow up on the 5,000 mask order that they mentioned they may want to produce.
Earthlink's Mask
25 February 2021
Cat Management Network's Mask
We are partnering with cat management network in NTU and donate our profits to fund their club as they are the only club in NTU that protect NTU's animals welfare
22 February 2021
Earthlink Mask Ideation
We aim to work together with Earthlink to sell a mask that empowers positive change. This mask will be available to be ordered during Earthlink's Green for Good event in 22 March, an event to encourage NTU students to be more environmentally sustainable.
In this movement, we propose to incorporate CustoMask as this mask can act as a sign of support for the movement.
19 February 2021
CustoMask to support social causes
We now focus on supporting social causes by giving our profits to environmental organizations such as acres and other foundations.
We aim to use this method to attract clubs to produce masks through CustoMask.
19 February 2021
Small Quantity embroiderred mask supplier alternative
In NTU, a number of clubs / individuals actually wants to order of a quantity below 50. However, our supplier's minimum order quantity is 50 (from India), and 250 from Indonesia. Because of this mismatch, we need to find alternative supplier.
I resort to searching for supplier on Shopee due to the reasonable price they offer.
We tested small quantity embroiderred mask with no minimum order quantity. The quality is surprisingly good!
As such, this will be a back up supplier when the MOQ is not met by clubs.
Valentine's day supplier search
From the hassle that was caused when we are dealing with NTUSU, I understood that manufacturers won't be able to produce fast & customise at a low quantity.
I am very sure that we are unable to customise at per piece level if we are to engage the indo supplier (I assume it's similar for India supplier)
Therefore, I tried searching for suppliers from shopee, as they sell at a per unit level. I found a supplier and it looks promising.
I set up urgent calls with the rest of the team as we need to move fast if we want the valentine's drop to happen. This is also because we're running out of time as time will be required for manufacturing and shipping. As it's also an overseas supplier, we need to have buffer time to be ready for some potential delays.
12 January 2021
Valentine's day website upgrade
I spent 5 hours doing the website, last minute, to get ready for the valentine's day drop.
We will take customer's order through the website, where the payment will be settled there,
and all the necessary details regarding the order will also be recorded through the website.
Link to the website : customasksg.com
Negotiation call with MayLin
Maylin was one of the 3 NTUSU representative during the call we had with NTUSU president. From NTUSU, the 3 representatives was Guan Ying (president), Maylin, and MeiLing. We had some escalation with NTUSU and I had a call with Maylin to know what's the issue.
The issue was :
Maylin understood that the price is $3 regardless of the quantity ordered and the lead time is 1 week
This was a huge communication and this was the reason why they backed out from the deal.
We explained our prices and it's $4.75 for the quantity they are looking to order (440 pieces).
Due to this miscommunication, they proposed to SAO the wrong budget and they contacted us last minute (2 weeks before the event).
I learned that, in the future, we need to send them an email to summarise the call / discussion we have to put everything in black and white. This is as an evidence of what we have discussed which will be useful for future use.
This should be our procedure from this time onwards.
6 January 2021
NTUSU Vice president email (continuation)
We arranged a zoom meet up 2 days after receiving the email. We had Devasri, NTUSU VP, and me on the call. We discussed our policies, prices, etc. We asked him to confirm the order on the next day as he has urgent request.
In the meantime, we source for supplier and ask whether express delivery is possible. This is because they want the mask to arrive within 2 weeks!
I sourced for supplier from Indo side. However, when we are only inquiring them, they already start producing the mask as the message that they got is " this needs to be made fast ".
However, on the next day, when NTUSU gets back to us, they decided to cancel the order!
This resulted in much trouble for us and the Indonesian supplier. As such, I called another NTUSU representative, Maylin, to ask why they are backing off and what are the issues they have with CustoMask as we still want the deal with them (440 pieces!)
NTUSU Vice president email
NTUSU vice president is interested in creating a mask.
We tried our very best to give a fast response.
Learning how to modify the website with Siddharth
We decided to create a website. However, the website needs to be aesthetically pleasing. Therefore, I had a session with Sidd to learn how to design the websites and add the functionalities that we want.
We are able to add add-ons to the product and this will increase the total price that needs to be paid.
With some of my knowledge regarding product design and analytics, I care a lot with user's experience on the website. Not only it needs to be aesthetically pleasing, the experience needs to be smooth as well.
I added a paylah QRcode for easy scanning, so that making transactions becomes easy, and our customers do not drop off just before payment!
30 December
NTUSU president's response
NTUSU president responded to our publicity email saying that she is interested in producing masks with us. I am incharge of responding to NTUSU and there is a lot of back and forth with us as they want to know more about customask. In the end, we scheduled a meeting with NTUSU. (CustoMask x NTUSU) where all of CustoMask cofounders joined the meeting and 3 representatives from NTUSU. We quoted that the mask is $3 for 5000 pieces and lead time is 2-3 weeks. We had a fruitful discussion during the meeting. We are also excited as they have an upcoming project in June that may need 5000 masks. YAY
16 December
To NTU clubs publicity
To get customers for CustoMask, we need to contact NTU clubs.
There is a full list of NTU club's contacts on google and we used it to send an email blast to them. We used mail merge function to send personalised emails to them and we sent 150 emails with customsied heading "Dear xxx club" according to their club's name. This feature is useful in sending huge number of personalised email.
We hope we get some responses from them.
9 December
Better than expected Halloween drop!
Our mask filter has 488 opens and 178 captures!
This is better than expected!
2 November
Last minute post design
So happy that our mask AR design is approved by facebook in less than 1 day!
Designed for last minute posts for our instagram page (company intro & halloween drop). Intense last minute stuff! Would definitely want the posts to be up as the filter is approved! would really want to let my friends try on the mask filter and create our first round of hype for customask!
30 October
Last minute Halloween plans
It may not be as viable to get a physical mask, as local suppliers sell it at $8/pcs. For 10 giveaways, it'll cost $80. Additionally, it may not ship on time (by 31st October). Overseas suppliers from shopee offer the masks at about $2-$3, but it'll take more than 1 week for shipping.
However, we thought of creating a halloween instagram mask filter instead. Doing the design last minute, we managed to come out with some designs, and it is to be reviewed by instagram, which may take some time for approval. I really hope it will be approved before halloween.
28 October 2020
1st club design!
A request from NTU Research Society president to design a mask.
23 October 2020
Supplier search
I have been trying to find suppliers in Indonesia. Managed to contact with a supplier. The price of mask is at ~0.50 cents / pieces. It is water repellent and it can have various number of layers (1-3 layers). Customized minimum order quantity is 200. For shipping fee, the higher the weight, the cheaper the price per kg. Shipping fee will be at $140 sgd / 10kg. This may potentially be our alternative supplier, so we can choose the most suitable supplier to work together with.
Here's the sample given. However, it does not show that it has adjustable strap. Will inquire and update soon!
20 October 2020
CustoMask & Spark AR
We are exploring a new social media marketing strategy using Spark AR by facebook. It allows us to create custom masks using the software. With this new instagram filter featuring our masks, we can potentially make a viral social media movement using it. This will give us tremendous brand awareness through the social media channel.
We have added several features to it and we can't wait to roll it out to make it an official instagram filter.
17 October 2020
The start of CustoMask
In the first 4 modules, we joined as a group together as we are passionate in the topic of veganism, where 2 of us are vegans and another 2 of us are flexitarian. We journeyed through the 4 modules with our vegan business idea and it was a fun experience indeed. However, Devasri proposed to change the business idea from the vegan catering service to selling mask merchandise. This is not what I expected it to be, but considering the feasibility of the mask merchandise, it actually makes more practical sense due to its higher feasibility in almost all the aspects.
I believe that feasibility matters, and I am agreeing to the idea even if that means forgoing what I initially wanted to do. I believe the mask idea will be a success.
8 October 2020