Beta Test Week 4
Long time, no see! In last week’s blog, I talked about confirming the location for my event, inviting another vendor to collaborate with me, and making plans to go to a local K-pop winter market. Before I update you all about that, though, I’ll let you take a look at my agenda for this final week leading up to the day of the test!
Now, I’ll get back to this winter market I mentioned. I found out about this event through my mutuals on the Super Mini K-pop Shop’s instagram account. Many of the shops I’ve been following and looking up to for inspiration were selling their products at a new bubble tea shop, known as Mochibees, in Greenville. The upstate organization for BTS fans was also there taking donations for a local food bank, and everyone who donated got to enter a raffle to win a free BTS album.
I was truly blown away by the creativity of some of these shops. They offered all kinds of cute stickers, keychains, buttons, and homemade photocards. I talked briefly to some of the owners as well, and they were very kind. Then, I made my way over to the official albums and photocards shop. I was most nervous about approaching owners of this business, since I wanted them to think of me as a friend rather than a similar competitor. They were quite busy, though, so I bought an album from them and called it a day.
I made sure to take a picture of the merchandise I bought and thank all of the shops on my instagram story before I left the event.
After the winter market, my friend and I made our way down the street to the movie theater for the Seventeen concert showing. Being in a room with lots of other fans made the atmosphere feel like a real concert, so we had a blast at the movie.
Now, having seen the winter market and the movie, all that I needed to do before my own event was establish prices for my merchandise, gather materials for my booth, and do some last minute advertising.
I made a spreadsheet with the original prices for every item. From there, I applied 10% and 15% markups to see what the new prices would amount to. I assessed each item’s worth, and if I thought the markup was too much, I adjusted the price once again. I also decided to make every price a whole number, so that it would be easy to make change for people using cash at my event.
As for my booth equipment, I gathered up two folding tables, one clothes rack (to be used as a display for hanging posters), and a shelf for albums. My mom and I also bought Christmas wrapping paper to cover the tables and give them a more festive appearance. We made a garland with balloon letters that spelled out “joy,” and we even made goodie bags with candy that I could give away to my customers.
At this point, my event was only a few days away, so it was time for me to post a reminder about it on Instagram. I aimed to achieve two things with this post: to remind everyone of the date, time, and location, and to announce the custom drinks available at my event courtesy of Ding Tea.
On Saturday, December 23rd, I arrived at Ding Tea an hour before the official start time of the event. I was a little stressed, since I never had the opportunity to scope out the building beforehand and figure out an exact plan for setting up. Luckily, though, the staff gave me suggestions based off what other pop-up shops have done in the past. Once I picked out a spot, my dad helped me carry everything inside. We actually filmed the process, so here’s the timenlapse!
That’s all for my final week leading up to the event! My next blog will be a reflection once I’ve done inventory and had more time to collect my thoughts. Thank you so, so much for reading about this last busy week!
-Noah
