The student trade fair was another event on the long list we were due to attend. Each company (postgraduate and undergraduate) had a task of creating a stool and generating sales on the day. For us, the trade fair meant mainly struggles with the actual product.
A few days before the trade fair, our Operations Manager Sakeenah wanted to order the games from the fabric printing company she contacted previously. What we found out was that the price of the printing was nearly 5 times as much as previously quoted. What happened? We’re still not sure. I must have been a human mistake.
The situation did not discourage us, and we kept on researching other options. The companies we contacted offered great, but costly services that we could not afford.
We have decided to contact the printing department of University. We were told we can use their equipment out of charge. Sakeenah scheduled the meeting. What we found out left us really disappointed but also extremely stressed. We were told that because we do not have the health and safety training we cannot use the printer at all. The only way to use it is to buy the fabric, the ink and expense the cost if one of the departments technicians work. We were told that printing might take the whole day and the results may not be as expected. Again, the cost turned out to be much higher than we could afford.
We had to pivot! If we could not have the game printed on fabric, we had to come up with something else or we would not have the product ready for the trade fair at all! I came up with an idea of presenting the game in the form of cards. Even though it required the game to be redesigned this was all we could do within two days.
Aye redesigned the game and we spent the whole day printing. Fighting with the printer, printing on the wrong side/wrong direction and running out of ink were all struggles we encountered. Finally, after a few hours of try and error 11 games were complete and ready to be sold. We also took care of printing leaflets and small posters for the stool.
On the day, Sakeenah brought the table cover and sweets. We brought the games and we were ready to sell. We’ve decided to approach our potential customers in a friendly manner. We wanted to build rapport with them before we start forcing them to buy our product.
The quality if our product was definitely the downside. However we managed to sell 3 games priced at £4 each. I consider it a great achievement.
Another success was the Games Night we created. We asked our customers to participate in a games night, where they could play the game for free. We had around a 100 names on the guest list. This is going to be a great night!
PS
You can still join us for the Games Night! You know where to find us 🙂
PS 2
Great talk about entrepreneurial pivoting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3xcJptA9_g
Make Art not War 