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.