Evaluation

This project set out to create a long term small business enterprise that could continue to expand and grow in the future and it has done mostly done that, by breaking even with the money spent and money made means that barely any technical profit has been made it does mean that any future item sold will be all profit which is a success. Though the throughout the road getting here their where many success and failure which have both helped and hindered this outcome, some are directly my fault and others are where simply unavoidable.

One of the first things to go right about this project is parts of the research, as it really helped me mark down the right demographic to sell to and from the experience of who I sold what piece too almost all of them fit into the demographic proving it accurate and useful as is shown throughout other successes. A lot of this can also come down to the surveys helping to pin down the demographic while it also helps that I managed to get a decent number of replies to the surveys which really helped the information quality. Some of the art work also went well and was finished to a good standard this also helps with the brand identity as I feel that the brand identities of the business was very strong and connected which helped to make it more professional. The reason the brand identity was so strong was because I very much tried to keep everything about the project on one stylistic note, so everything from the Etsy page to my Instagram posts, to the store set up at the fairs which helped to all link together with the products to create a professional looking outcome. The budget also worked well as almost everything was on budget with only a small few overspends from unexpected angles, if this had gone wrong it could have greatly affected the whole project and destroyed any chance of a profit for a while to come; this was because I managed to correctly judge where spending need to take place and what it would be worth spending on in order to get this. I also believe the pricing was correct as when put against an the correct audience in the right setting the products sale rose dramatically which might not have happened now where near as much if it had not been correctly priced up; and this correct pricing was again because of relevant and useful research which helped guide the decision. There were also a lot of things outside of my control which helped me in the project, the main one being the Christmas Church Fair which just happened to pop up at the right time and still have a free table to rent, as without this the project would not have broken even. There are also the independent sales which made up a huge portion of the sales, some of these where conducted face to face by myself but a lot of them came from people I know talking to people they know and selling through spread of word which was a huge help on the project and another success.

There where however a huge amount of failures and hindrances which damaged the project, one of the main ones being the failure of the House of the Country fair as it was primed up to be the biggest income out of the whole project, with the right demographic at the right time of year and the right kind of product, so what caused this. Well in short many things, one of the main ones being the position of the stall which was in an awkward position away from any other stalls siting on an out of the way corner which already puts a barrier for people to actually find us and being apart from other stalls makes approaching the stall much more of an effort for any potential customers as well as making it a more confrontational ordeal which could have effected how many people approached the stall in the first place. There was also the matter of the weather as it was very cold on the day and had occasional rain which led to less people visiting the village and for the ones who did come they sought out the warm inside shops over the cold wet outside stalls which almost certainly effected visitors to the stall. It was also the weekend after black Friday which could have affected sales in unknown ways, such as people already having spent the Christmas budget or just simply not wanting to go out Christmas shopping for the second time in a weekend. That weekend was also the last before payday which again could affect sales as people might be waiting till they had been played before splashing out on presence. Though one of the biggest potential issues was that the fair was simply just not advertised, as other than through researching somewhere to hold a stall I myself would have had no idea it was one, there was no outside banners or any form of advertising, the only thing we found was a single post on the shopping villages small Instagram page which meant the event did not have nowhere near as much foot fall as it should have and according to the other shops we talked to that weekend it has been practically bad foot fall and they too had also made poor money; we also heard this from other stall owners who were complaining about it. The last issue that could have caused it though was quite simply the atmosphere; at the other fair I attended it was inside a warm church hall with decorations, music, mulled wine and other nice atmospheric additions and so had an amazing Christmassy atmosphere about the whole place while the shopping village just radiated cold damp winter which can greatly affect the mood of shopped and simply not make them want to buy anything. All of these individual problems added up to cause the failure of the event, many of them could not be seen from beforehand and while this was a failure it has taught me more about looking for potentially successful fairs, by looking into them deeper and potentially reaching out to previous people who attended and getting their opinion first before booking in order to not make a mistake like this again.

The other greatest failure was in the product itself, as while the printing and production where up to standard the artwork simply was not it was not the style I had intended at all and looked old fashioned and like something you would find on your grandmothers kitchen wall which had been there for over thirty years. This was mainly caused by a poor selection in imagery and an even poorer selection in background colour, had the background been painted in a rich red it could have been much better which could have dramatically improved sales. Though the main reason why they were so bad can simply be put down to time restraints and poor decisions on the design, with more testing and mock ups this could have been avoided and with more time another set could have been made which could have hugely impacted sales had it been better. This brings me to another problem, time management, it was poor throughout the whole project with not allowing enough time for the creation of the product which unlimitedly lead to its failure; this could have been improved with better planning and better understanding of where time should and shouldn’t be spent for the best results. Something else which could have been done better is the product photos for the items as they turned out very dark and struggled a bit to immediately communicate the item to the viewer, this could have effected online sales and could have resulting in a single sale had this been the case. Though for this the solution is simply to get better at product photos and practice them more in order to perfect them for Etsy in order to get the best results from them. There were also research problems early on as I feel I could have done a lot more research which could have helped to direct the work in a better and strong direction which could have potentially stopped the piece of work from being how they are, this could have been improved with simply more time spent on the research and taking better and greater use of resources, such as using magazines and journals to help find out information instead of just replying on the internet for resources.

In conclusion the project had a lot of problems, but it also had it successes as well and while it didn’t make a ton of profit it did break even which with the hindrances provided by the project is in itself a success especially since as time goes on and I continue growing the project and continue making more sales and more profit it will continue to get more successful. And for the failures and hindrances throughout this project while they may have damaged the overall outcome they have given me plenty of experiences and learned knowledge from creating an enterprise like this that I can take and apply to the future to prevent them from happening again, making this an overall success whether that means defying hindrances to still come out with a small profit or to simply learn from previous mistake to help make better enterprises in the future.