Upon auditing the total sales generated by the bazaar, it was realized that a gross total of a little over 50,000 pesos were produced by all products sold under both CPoint and Vestrada. This represents around a third of the total value of the stock provided by both businesses. However, it is important to note that despite there having been more products sold from Vestrada, the overall division of sales between both businesses was rather close to a 50% split between the two. This is probably due to the fact that the average price of the products under Vestrada is way less than that of CPoint; also, the demand for shoes among the student body seemed to be considerably less than that of the demand for bags, wallets and other such products.
Based on the needs analysis it was realized that Marikina City is rather isolated from its potential customer base. The group observed that many of the faculty and even students knew of the reliability and affordability of Marikina City’s shoe industry during the bazaar, but did not have the adequate means to travel there to buy. This implies the need to distribute the products across a larger area, which can facilitated through online selling.
Additionally, while the businesses the group collaborated with were already somewhat established and found some success online, it is the hope of the group that the exchanges with the businesses therein helped generate renewed interest in online selling in other shoemakers.
Even still with the accomplished shoe bazaar, the group was not able to reach out to some of the smaller businesses that struggled financially (thus the inclusion of Vestrada). This was either due to a lack of trust within the community or an unwillingness to learn about modern methods. The planned seminar was meant to allow shoemakers to more readily trust the online market and be inspired to start their own selling pages with the help of the group. However, that was not necessarily the case with the final implementation, although the group believes the endeavor was fruitful nonetheless: the interactions of the group with the two aforementioned businesses might allow other shoemakers to follow them in their footsteps towards online selling.
The bazaar in general was to jumpstart raising awareness for the Marikina shoe industry to revitalize it. It was also meant to show how important the use of social media and online payments are to a business in this day and age. While the project did not touch on specific aspects of the Philippine online selling market, such as the use of Facebook live or TikTok for selling livestreams, it shows a glimpse that the stores can hopefully use to gain more interest for their online presence, as well as to share what they learned to other stores in the area. In the future, we hope that the shoemakers use their platforms to extend the reach of their stores to the greater Metropolitan Manila area, and even internationally.
NAVIGATION