The sales event on Thursday 3rd December did not actually go as well as planned, personally expecting more flow of customers and products being sold, I was left feeling quite dissapointed with the 7 decorations sold... bringing in around £8.00/£9.00.
One reason that I feel restricted our sales was the fact that there was alot of people sharing two or three tables. This not only looked intimidating to potential customers (with around 20 people sat 'staring') but also didn't allow for the products to be displayed in the way that we had hoped due to lack of space.
Another factor was the position of the stalls. They were set up in the 'Atrium' cafe which meant that the potential customers were going there on lunch breaks or to meet friends so did not have the time to browse our stalls. Also, there wasn't a steady flow of people going through the site, and we noticed that the area downstairs (the entrance and reception of the SU) had a constant flow and it looked apparent that the units downstairs seemed to be getting more business.
As a group when designing our product we could have also tried to make the purpose of the decoration more clear, as they were made out of jewellery, many people thought they were earrings or brooches. We tried to overcome this by placing a few of the decorations on a christmas tree on the stall.
The advertisement for the event could have been improved to make the sales more significant, I personally didn't see any posters advertising the event so I presume alot of students didn't actually know about it. We could have also pushed the idea of profits going to charity, the fact that the products were ideal gifts with gift wrapping optional and that they were made from recycled jewellery (Eco friendly.)
With the chance to do this again, I feel that the next attempt at a business idea for either mothers day or valentines day will be more successful due to the mistakes made this time round and the fact that I have learned from them.

Creative business

The market research that I carried out helped me to understand the different colour trends for the 2009 season, these included the traditional golds and reds and also black and purple. So when sourcing out my materials such as ribbon and beads, I found that I had to actually buy the jewellery from retail to find the right colours and finishes I wanted, and although this defeats the object of the eco-friendly route, many of the other beads and 'nick-nacks' were recycled. The images above show a few of my finished decorations in which are going for sale tomorrow at the christmas market.

Creative business

For the creative business elective we were asked to evolve a business idea based on the theme of christmas. The idea being that we would have to come up with an product idea, design it, make it, budget, carry out market research and then proceed to sell it at the christmas fair.

After my group looked at the jewellery company 'Accessorize' in a class task, we got the inspiration to design a range of christmas tree decorations similar to the kind of jewellery 'Accessorize' sold; classy, elegant and shining.

Also, to add another edge to the product range, we decided that they would made out of mainly recycled old jewellery and beads. Not only is this eco friendly, it also makes the profit margin bigger as not alot of money had to be spent on sourcing materials. (Profits going to Derian House Childrens Hospice.)