Progress Update 1

Progress Update 2

Progress Update 3

Progress Update 4

Progress Update 5

Progress Update 6
Closing deals and following up with potential deals

As Shi Zhou proceeds with closing deals with School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS) Club, Devasri closing deals with NTU Model United Nations etc, I was tasked to co-ordinate with NTU Accountancy and Business Club (ABC) in the mask sales. With Aileen being the designer of our team, she helped designed the above masks to give an idea of how NTU ABC masks can look like. I co-ordinated with the contact person of NTU ABC and we are in the midst of drafting an email to UPO to give the green light before proceeding with collaborating with NTU ABC. Closing this deal would be a huge milestone in our journey as NBS has a huge following in NTU and masks would be supplied for years to come. We are hopeful UPO will give the greenlight to proceed with this collaboration.

With deals being closed, CustoMask hopes to collate our sales and have our first order in by 31st Dec 2020.

Progress Update 7

Progress Update 8

Aileen has been hard at work creating designs and posters for our Instagram Page. Our Valentines Day promotion aims to open orders until 20th Jan (with possibility of extension should demand be high) with a 3-4 weeks lead time before the masks arrives. This is a step towards expansion into B2C market rather than the usual B2B business model we originally had.

Website is fully functional and finally up and running as of 14 January 2021.
Fingers crossed for orders coming in!

After much trial and error with Business to Consumer sales, we realise that Business to Business sales were the way to go as orders are in bulk which is better received by our supplier in India. It was tough to propose to the supplier to manufacture just a few pieces of masks. After the closing of deal with ASE Club with their order of 26 pieces of masks, we expanded into NTU Halls. We started contacting contact persons from NTU Halls and shared with them CustoMasksg quotation and MOQ requirements. We are hopeful to collaborate with some NTU Halls and be their official mask supplier.

After the insight from Prof Roderick and Prof Adrian, we decided to explore working with charites and non-profit organisations. While we are still sourcing for suitable organisations to work with, NBS Accountancy and Business Club has approached us again regarding purchasing of masks for their events. The professor-in-charge was impressed with the idea of social enterprise and we are still in discussion for a preliminary first order of 50 masks followed by a subsequent bulk order if criteria like quality and designs are met. A bulk of our proceeds will go to charity/non-profit organisations from this transaction and our CustoMasksg team are still in discussion of the relevant organisations to work with.

Over the past few weeks, we have been contacting clubs in NTU to collaborate with them with a social cause in mind. We are glad to announce that we have succesfully closed deals with NTU Cat Management Network (CMN) and NTU Earthlink regarding the sales of our masks to them. Profits from NTU CMN will 100% be going to them to fund their operations in ensuring the safety and wellbeing of cats, such as medical and food expenses for cats, while some profits from Earthlink will go to ACRES. We have learnt and progressed a lot after previous failed dealings with NTU Student Union. We learnt that we should always follow up and put our discussion and agreements in writing, and also be upfront with our prices. For our deals with CMN and Earthlink, we have put our agreements in writing and drafted up a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to solidify our deals.

We are now in the process of collating the orders to be sent to our supplier.

Additionally, we are still awaiting the news from NBS, with a potential order of between 800-1000 masks. I have personally contacted Jordan (contact person for NTU Accountancy and Business Club for NBS) in hopes of expediting the process. However, the NBS professor in charge of approval of the deal is still yet to make a decision.
We are eargerly hoping for good news in the next few days.

With the business showcase coming up next week, our team has delegated our work in preparation for the slide deck presentation and this, along with confirming our orders, will be the priority over the next few days.

Along with the 4 other groups in the Minor in Entrepreneurship course, we presented our business and shared our journey that was started in May 2019. This event was a culmination and practical application from our course together in ET9131, ET9132, ET9133, ET9134 and finally ET9135.

In the showcase, I was heartened to see how far our batch as grown, from brainstorming on business ideas, to business plan development and finally implementation. Throughout the journey, every group faced difficulties in their own aspects but overcame them and learnt through these setbacks and successes. All these will equip us well when we enter the workforce and allow us to gain the experience when we want to start on an entrepreneaurship again in the future.

For our sharing, we presented on our journey detailing how many of our agreements with customers fell through due to miscommunication on our part which was borned out of inexperience. This was one of the major learning curve I faced and thankful that I faced this problem early in my entrepreneaurship journey. We overcame this by writing a detailed summary of agreements and information made with our customers and sent them either through emails or whatsapp. We constantly made the effort to follow up to close the deals as soon as possible. Taking ownership and responsibility is really key in ensuring deals go through. Additionally, another major learning point is improving our marketing campaign. While we managed to hit a following of about 100 on our Instagram page, more could be done to improve our reach. The Halloween Giveaway was a success but we could leverage more by working with influencers and getting social organisations to post us on their page to increase our reach. These are key pointers which I will look to implement on my next entrepreneaurship journey. Finally, we also learnt that having social causes and missions really boosted our sales. More customers and organisations were more willing to work with us after hearing our proposal for social causes and supported our sales. As such, it is integral to incorporate social missions into our businesses in the future, not only to help in sales, but also really to do good for the world.