So, I held my first bazaar sale with Julia (from
SilverAngels Accessories) yesterday.
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| Presenting... the lovely ladies, Julia and Cassandra! |
Honestly, our sales sucked - big time! However, I did gain some valuable experience and I had 3 main takeaways from this event. But let me start from the beginning.
Julia and I decided it would be a good idea for us to hold a collaborative jewellery sale. I've been selling online since 2008, but I've never ventured into doing retail. So we found this bazaar at Bedok Point (east of Singapore) and decided to try it out for a day.
On the day itself, I arrived early and did my setup first.
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| Very supportive bf helping me with display |
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| Display done! |
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| Bright and early and excited! |
Not long after, Julia arrived and did her setup.
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| Our entire jewellery display |
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| Close-up of Julia's items |
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| My display again, with pricing signs added in |
We were there for a full day, but only made a couple of sales =( However, I'm taking this as a learning experience. As the great Bram Stoker,
Dracula, said, "We learn from failure, not from success!"
Here are my 3 takeaways from my first bazaar sale:
1) People in Singapore like to be left alone to browse.
Yup, they do not like any sort of interaction when browsing! It was actually kind of funny - whenever we tried to approach someone who was browsing through our items, even if it was just to say a simple "Hello", they would walk away immediately! Even when we were sitting behind the booth, people would tend to only look at our items from a distance. We had to resort to standing away from our booth in order to get people to feel more at ease with browsing our items (sure enough, they did!) and approach them only when they seemed more interested. Even then, we scared off quite a few people once we approached!
2) One girl's taste is another girl's turnoff.
I guess I knew this one already, but the bazaar was a good reminder that not everyone's taste is similar to mine. I go for the unique, quirky designs that stand out from the crowd. However, I've been expanding my jewellery range, and I did have some cutesy designs in my display. Sure enough, it was the cutesy stuff that sold. The bazaar is a good reminder that I cater to a niche crowd!
3) Look beyond the sales.
While sales were bad, I did manage to introduce my items to a number of people and give out namecards, telling them to visit my online store. Surprisingly, people were especially captivated by my sterling silver gemstone jewellery and wanted to find out more! I was definitely more than happy to talk to them, it's nice talking to people who are interested in gemstones too. I also made some new friends with our retail neighbours, and got to find out more about the flea market/bazaar community. So while sales were bad, I'm learning the good from the bad =)
