Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 August

Another quiet weekend in Thriftland unfortunately, though I think the sales team has met up to take photos of new backpacks to put up on our Facebook page. We have gotten a number of messages from people who want to buy the backpacks on this social media platform so we want to make sure that we can use this as a selling vehicle as much as possible. The current problem we are encountering with our product is that each one is unique therefore people have to see the bags to choose one so constantly updating Facebook whenever a bag is sold is proving to be overwhelming and difficult. That is the advantage with standardisation. I am confident that the group will try as hard as possible to keep up with that. Tomorrow we have a board of directors meeting. Sarah is chairing this time. Fingers crossed for us that it will go well. Speaking about our Facebook page, I love the look-book for backpacks on the Facebook page. Shea did an amazing job. She managed to communicate the spirit of the brand. Our brand is about fun and individualism, people that aren't afraid to stand out.

                                       Thrift Facebook campaign

Friday 23 August

Today was a good day even though not much happened with regards to the group. My day was particularly busy because I had lectures from 8am until 3pm with no breaks in between. Next week is the Board of Directors Meeting. I am a bit nervous about it because even though it is not for marks I think the group has been slacking just a little bit. We were given so many great ideas and so many avenues to explore in terms of what customer markets we can target (e.g tourists) but in my opinion we have not done enough to explore those markets. Like I was saying yesterday two of the areas that we scored low on were productivity and accomplishment. Other groups have been approaching neighbourhood newspapers and blogs. Getting their product into shops, going to markets every weekend, having pop-up parties among other things. To push this product we are going to have to sacrifice and put in the work. Sacrifice is the key to success. Sometimes you have to sacrifice time and money to be successful. While I think one should have some balance between all the different roles he or she may play, I believe in prioritising. You have prioritise what is important to you, if you whether it is a relationship or a business. If you don't it will never reach its full potential. That is a big lesson I am learning. 

Thursday 22 August

Today the Entrepreneurial Strategies class was particularly interesting because the group did an exercise based on Quinn's organisational culture model that not only helped to identify the group’s strengths and weaknesses but also individual strengths and weaknesses. The group realised that while we scored high in areas such as participation/openness and commitment/morale we scored low in areas such as stability/control and productivity/accomplishment. We were advised by the lecturer David to make sure that in the areas where we are weak as a group, we should encourage those team members that have scored high in those areas to step up and lead the team in those areas. It was good for the group to see where our strengths and weaknesses are. This one was even more helpful than the Basadur profile we did at the beginning of the year because it had a lot more components to it and it also helps you identify what the how strong or how weak you are at each characteristic.

Quinn's assessment and skills building exercise

Quinn's organisational culture

Wednesday 21 August

Today we had our weekly group meeting. The importance of having a Shareholders’ Agreement once again came to mind. We have a clause that says when a decision needs to be made and there is not a total consensus then the majority counts. The group has received a lot of orders for backpacks on our Facebook page so the group was trying to decide whether or not we should have an official website as well. Some people were of the opinion that our target market was most likely to use a Facebook page versus an official website. Others felt that a Thrift website would make us seem like more an official business. The clause allows the group to finalise a decision before tempers flare or before things get too heated. It also saves the group time, because instead of spending too long debating an issue if a decision time drags on for too long we can quickly make a decision and ‘keep it moving’. The Shareholders' Agreement has also been great for group accountability. Adding the clause about group members getting a fine or a warning when there is an infringement on the rules occurs has also helped make sure that the group functions better and made it clear that we are all essentially business partners even though we are all friends. If a group member gets three fine or warning, they immediately forfeit half of their profit and it share among the rest of the group members. Assignments are done and sent to the editors on time and meetings are taken a lot more seriously. One can not rely on someone being a 'good person' because ultimately human beings are flawed, they are selfish. They need something to motivate them to do the right thing and the Shareholders Agreement does that.

Stuart Hendry, our Genesis course convener, once again stressed the importance of a business  knowing their target market at the Sunrise Workshop. The guest speaker who came did not have any advice to give this week but he talked to the class about his online store.  It was nice to see an entrepreneur who was out there trying to make it nonetheless.

A shareholders agreement

Tuesday 20 August

Currently the group is working on the product so that we can better satisfy the needs of our consumers. The production team is working on trying to make sure that the Thrift items that are going to be used for the bags is made from mostly thick and dark and autumn colours materials that have interesting textures. We had one particular bag made out of leather that was very popular during the exhibition. We only had one and even though we  had only produced one and reserved it for a customer that had gone to the ATM and several customers kept begging to buy it. Stuart keeps stressing knowing your customer so it is important for us to make sure that we develop a leather product line for those customers. 

Monday 19 August

After a long seven months of high highs and low lows, everyone in the course is clearly exhausted. The word “over it” comes to mind unfortunately. The group dynamic is positive and strong (by that I mean , however the level of passion and work required to really push the project has been a little low as of late. With so many things going on in terms of school work and our personal lives it has been difficult to give 110% to the business. The question is “ how to does a leader keep a team motivated?”. Just like any business we have competition internally within the course and externally with other legitimate businesses. It is hard not to be distracted by what other groups are doing, or comparing ourselves with other groups. Like we learnt in Entrepreneurial Strategies at the beginning of the semester, people get into envy and instead of focusing on what they are doing they start to concentrate too much on what other groups are doing. People then begin to get de-motivated about their business or product instead of focusing on doing the best they can with their own stuff. I think the group needs to do some team building to get us back on track to finish off the year strong.

 Remember to have fun along the way

Kim and Sarah looking very Thrift on the day of Exhibition

Sam and Teboho at the Thicket booth 

Dean and Murray having fun at the Thicket photo booth

Sunday, 18 August 2013

Weekend over

I do not know if it’s just me but the weekend always seem to pass so quickly. But anyway I am looking forward for this week especially for the Management Theory in Practise (Mtip) lectures. This coming week we will be focusing more on personal and organisational effectiveness. We started this topic last week and so far I am enjoying. We focused on the individual values, motives and problem solving skills so as to understand organisational effectiveness using the competing values model. Competing value model basically aims to help organisations to become adaptable, flexible, stable and controlled.  On order to understand this principle we had to answer questionnaires based on your problem solving, values and motives as leaders. I realised that my main strengths as a leader in team building, setting the direction and clearly defining the roles within the group. It was quite an interesting exercise and I am looking forward to learning more about tour group management which is going to be the focus for the next session. 

Saturday, 17 August 2013

Time so for some rest

I think after such a hectic week, everyone is glad that it’s Saturday, time to rest and breathe for two seconds. I mean literally seconds because we have a lot of work to do in terms of building our brand. We have been thinking of couple of ideas as to how to go about this but it is such a mission to make everything work. But we are entrepreneurs, we make things happen therefore I think this weekend will serve just that by brain storming on developing creative ways of building a strong sustainable brand.

I think I will leave it short and sweet for today because I need to do more creative thinking our brand.

Friday, 16 August 2013

Oral presentation

This week has been quite hectic, preparing for the exam and oral presentation while also running a business and also not forgetting going to lectures. It was a very intense week. Our oral went fine (Even though I feel I could have done way better). Like I said yesterday, I really appreciate PCU because I have learned so much from it. They are equipping us with all the necessary skills and knowledge that will help us to communicate effectively at work, conferences, etc. This is also helpful to us as young entrepreneurs.

We have learned that in order to deliver a good business presentation, one need to do the following:

1. Know your audience

If asked to speak or pitch a session, then the first step is to research your potential audience to know about things such as their level of experience in the area you are presenting, topics of interest, etc. If you don’t do this, then you are guaranteed to fail.

2. Construct a plan

This can be achieved by using the plan that suits your style. Having a plan is important because it helps to contrast a coherent and logical message. Then once you have clear idea, you can start thing about what you will say and what you will show using PowerPoint slides flipchart posters, etc.

 I have really learned a lot from this course. Anyway I will here for today.

Thursday, 15 August 2013

PCU (Professional Communications Unit) EXAM TODAY

I cannot believe that the day is finally here to write PCU exam. Wow, this year has gone by so fast. I remember it was just few months ago attending PCU lectures and today is the day to write the actual exam. I really do not know how I feel about it but one thing I can say is that I am very grateful for those input lectures and workshops because they taught us a lot about working in a group. Some of the lessons I can recall from those lectures were how to build team spirit and group dynamic.

I learned that in order for everyone to have the same team spirit, we need to work towards the same goal; we need to have shared responsibilities, resources and benefits. In addition, each member needs to feel a sense of belonging to the group and this can be achieved by being good listeners and having a non-judgemental working environment.

I have also learned that as a group we can foster team spirit by celebrating our achievements as a group, giving credit to individuals (by praising them for the job well done), identifying each other’s unique strengths and then allocate task according to each members strengths and then lastly encourage a sense of unity (maybe by having a panic as a group).

So all in all I can say that I have learned a lot from PCU both as an individual and as a team player. I have also improved in my business report writing skills which was a struggle for me at the beginning of the year.

Oh, I almost forgot that tomorrow we have our PCU oral presentation rehearsal with Christel (I will speak about that tomorrow).

That is all for today (as I need to finish revising for the exam at 17:00). 

Wednesday, 14 August 2013

Great lessons from the Genesis Workshop

Wow. Today I was so inspired and encouraged by the lecture given by guest lecturer, Tim Shier, during our weekly Genesis workshop. Tim shared with us some of the most important lessons he has learned as an entrepreneur. These lessons were quite informative and applicable to us especially now that we are official entrepreneurs, running our own business.  Some of the things he shared with us are key attributes that Stuart has always preached to us. So here are some of the lessons he talked about (I will just list five as they were too many to write all of them down)

Kim and Sarah sellng the backpacks

1. Failure is a key learning process

·         Learning is about change and failure provides us with the feedback necessitating change. He also mentioned that as entrepreneurs we are always pushing to be innovative and therefore it will difficult to be innovative if you are afraid to fail.

2. Give more than you take

·         Always be willing to be the helping hand in the community whenever you can.

3. Always live by design not by default

·         Stuart had also touched on this subject and now we are hearing about it again, so it means it is important. Living by design, means setting your own goals and purpose in order to achieve your desired outcome instead of following the society norms and way of doing life.

Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

4. Only do things you are passionate about

·         If you do only things you are passionate about, you will do it well. It will be more like a hobby to you than actual work.

5. Empower your team

·         This is very important as it can increase the morale and team spirit as each member will feel valuable to the group and as the result perform very well. It also increases the group dynamic and the workplace become fun and non-judgemental one.

I really enjoyed this workshop today and now I am ready to face and conquer the world.

Later...

Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Strategic plan forward

Today we had out weekly meeting and everyone shared what they learned from the Young Entrepreneursr Product launch, whether it was in direct relation to the product itself or related to team work.  We discussed the way forward in terms of creating more brand awareness. We are still busy constructing our website, which should be up and running before the end of this month. Having a website will further help to get more exposure of our product to a broader market segments as we are planning to make limited backpack edition for corporate market and also have a leather range of backpacks (as it seemed to be the favourite). In addition, we are also planning to create a cool advert video which will be out in mid-September in order to position our brand in the mind of our target markets. This is very exciting and we are keeping our fingers crossed that all goes according to plan.

Yeah. That was all for today.

Monday, 12 August 2013

Lessons learned for the Launch

The Young Entrepreneurs Product launch is over and I am so thankful that it went well. Albeit I was worried about it because of insufficient advertising of the product, however everything went better than I anticipated as the students responded well to our product. Some of the things we learned during the preparation and on the actual launch day are discussed below and tomorrow, during our weekly group meeting, we will perform an after action review and make all the necessary changes. These changes will ensure that our business expands in terms of market share.

Setting SMART Objective

Setting clear and SMART objectives within the group is vital as this will keep us in the right direction and ensure that everything is done during the time it was suppose to be. This was a very important lesson learned especially with regard to production. We did not have clear and realistic planning with our CMT and as the result we only had 90 backpacks on the day of the exhibition as she was still making the other 60 bags. This caused a lot of pressure and stress within the group and our CMT. I think we failed to plan and communicate with Evette (the CMT) effectively about our launch date so that by the exhibition all the bags would be ready. Everything had to be rushed, you can just imagine the quality of those bags. But thankfully because we have a CMT that has been in operation for more than 20 years, they were able to at least deliver 40 backpacks out of the remaining 6o which were of good quality. However the stress and panic we had to go through was too much.

Putting the team first                                                                                                                  

 I have learned that as a team player I need to put my team first at all times, therefore all my priorities have to be towards enhancing the group dynamic and performance. This also means that I need to trust my team and they need to trust me, as trust is everything. The team trust is earned through integrity, consistency, honesty and transparency to just name a few. Therefore I have learned that it is my responsibility to always conduct myself in a manner that will reflect these principles to ensure the success of our group. I saw that during the launch, we needed to support each other and help in the sales our backpacks. For instance since I am in the production team, I cannot say that I will not help the sales team. I was very happy with the group because I saw that we all exhibit qualities of a sales person.

This has taught me that as a team member, I should not wait to be told what to do by others but I should take initiative and set an example within the group. Instead of worrying about lack of performance, productivity and commitment of others, I should simply set the example and show my team what hard work, passion and commitment is. 

Saturday and Sunday 10th-11th August

The long weekend of productivity continued as we rolled out of bed in time for the rugby.

Friday 9th August

This long weekend was taken by all as an official Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship holiday. No work was done. In fact absolutely nothing productive was attempted- other than venturing off the couch in order to make a carrot cake. 

Thursday 8th August

Despite promises being made by the class that we would boycott lectures for the day (well deserved), some of the more diligent members deviated from the plan and were a part of David Prillaiid’s 10 class lecture at 9am the next morning. Nonsense if you ask me.  However we all made the concerted effort to attend our Marketing Theory in Practice later in the day. Some of us more than others as Julia Paterson decided to arrive an hour early. Just to be sure she didn’t miss anything. Alison Andrews also even made an effort to look nice for the lecture applying as similar lipstick to the one she had been wearing the night before.

                                         We know what you did last night Murray and Mike 

Wednesday 7th August

EXHIBITION DAY

We arrived at 7am on campus, driving through what would be the first rain storm in weeks. ‘Forecast will be happy’ was the first thought on all of our minds (referring to one of the other groups who made raincoats made out of recyclable material). Kim and Sarah went to go sort out things with Evette to get our last few backpacks and buy things such as prestick etc from the shops as soon as they opened at 8am.

The rest of us were hard at work putting together the stall with what we could in the meantime while I simultaneously ran around making sure the rest of the details for on the day exhibition worked out such as the VIP, the ribbon cutter and our MC. Everything was going according to plan until the campus traffic department confused our parking with the carreer day VIPs and gave away our parking to them. This combined with the rain meant less VIPs than expected which was disappointing.

Our stall however was looking incredible, with newspaper on the sides and a flatscreen TV with a slideshow of our photoshoot running continuously. This together with our own outfits as we draped ourselves in proper Thrift attire (complete with fur coats and grandmothers shirts), we were ready to showcase our product for the first time to the market.

 Thrift Stall

The day ran smoothly for Thrift. Although we were nervous about not having a Card machine and the impact this may have had on our sales, we genuinely did not have one person even enquire if they could pay by card. This could have been helped by the fact that our stall was positioned directly next to the ATMs downstairs or just that R300 is now an acceptable amount of cash to have on hand.

It was exciting to be living the brand and the lessons we had learnt on sales techniques (“Always Be Closing”) and it was even more exciting to see the appreciation which the public had for the Thrift concept in general.

 

Teboho closing a sale

We sold over 50 backpacks in total which was, we felt, fantastic for a product priced at the point that it was and being brought into a new market.

At the closing of the exhibition at 4pm, there was much celebrations. The class took the leftover wine and made sure to put it to good use at our official afterparty.  Much fun was had by all. Especially Sarah Mills who despite insisting she didn’t like beer proceeded to drink it. And jump, on an egg.

Tuesday 6th August

Another day filled with meetings and preparation. The main excitement for the day being able to pick up the various designed posters, brochures and banners for the exhibition. Due to the rain, we weren’t able to put them onto any cars windscreens and students were less than obliging to take one from us.  However, soon they were all handed out, put up and folded and the committee were back on campus in the Leslie social in order to oversee the building of the exhibition stands from which we would be selling our products.

That’s when it all became very real.

With the stalls quickly set up and the various groups slowly coming in in order to prepare and decorate their stalls I was able to leave campus at around 7pm to go to Kim and Sarah’s house in order to return to Thrift matters and put together the finishing touches on our own stall.

We were able to hire three coat rails and black draping which we would use to hang and display the backpacks and cover the ugly white back of the stand. Our big ‘Thrift’ banner was stuck over the top and my moms Persian carpet was placed over the floor. The idea was to transform it into our very own little Thrift shop, with random clothing hanging from the back rail and a fur blanket over the table with our pottery cupcake money jar. The plan looked great in our heads however we quickly found out that true to Thrift style we had forgotten the details such as prestick, string etc. so we called it a night with the boys claiming that they would take care of everything and went to bed.

                                          Stall waiting to be transformed by some Thrift magic

Monday 5th August

If the countdown began last week, its only now when we are two days away did the weight of the clock begin to tick loud enough for us to hear. On the whole I would quite confidently say that we were nailing it for a Monday. Thrift had successfully made a total of 90 backpacks, with another 60 on their way. Our supplier, Evette, is a champion. Despite all of our struggles to get a manufacturer and the sleepless nights we went through, she was worth the wait. Just like we had first envisioned, every Thrift backpack is not just another place to store your books, but a one of a kind work of art.

We had our product and we had our general store design, the only challenge now was to bring it all together. 

The day started early for myself as not only did I have Thrift to think about but the entire running of the exhibition day. The committee met in the morning and we had a wonderfully productive meeting with some wonderfully productive people.

We then had a Thrift group meeting where we drew up the design for the stall, including a number of wildly creative and impractical ideas. The meeting was concluded with everyone going to do their relevant duties for the upcoming day. In comparison to cake sale, our planning was far better and resulted in no one wanting to die nor wanting to kill anyone in the days leading up to the event.