Nigel Tan - Operation Officer

Bachelor in Arts of Public Policy and Global Affairs (PPGA) (HonS) with Minor in Entrepreneurship at Nanyang Technological University

Hello folks! welcome to the official blog of Nigel Tan :D

I am a year 3 PPGA student as of September 2021. As a young boy, I am quite entrepreneurial, selling toys and bottle caps to my friends. I always dream of starting a side business to create an additional stream of income. This is why i sign up for a minor in entrepreneurship.

To the future batch of MiE students, I hope that my blog and that of my peer's serve as an inspirational guide in your ET9135 journey. Jiayou!

To my friend Marcus Law: If you are reading this, congratulation you made it!

Today, our group consulted Mr Roderick on our selected business idea which is about a platform that sells food from home business as well as exotic food items imported from overseas. Mr Roderick warn us that the business idea take too long to develop for a project that last for six months and told us that this idea is extremely risky as we are competing with tech giant like Facebook. Heeding to Mr Roderick's advice, we pitch to him our DIY terrarium idea and it was a hit with him as he is a plant lover. However, he also warn us that the business is also risky as the logistic of delivering live plants can be challenging especially during the pandemic. Undeterred, our team decided to select the DIY terrarium idea as our business idea.

As I do not have much experience with plants with the exception of making terrarium once, I decide to ask for help from my friend, Wee Cheng who mother run a florist store. Wee Cheng recommend that we visit some local nursery. So on the 30th October we visited Far East Flora at Thomson as well as the other flora store located near the strip. After the visit, it is clearer to us on what kinds of plants are suitable for terrarium and what items goes along with the terrarium. Wee Cheng told us that the items in Far East Flora are retail price and hence, are pricey. He told us that he could provide us with the stuff at a much competitive price and so I begin to negotiate with Wee Cheng on the stuff to buy. Thanks to Stevenson who brought a competitor's terrarium kit, we manage to find out the rough proportion of everything.

As everyone is busy this few weeks, the meeting was relatively short this week. Jyn task me to source for the box packaging for the DIY kits.

This week, I manage to source for the box for our terrarium DIY kits. It difficult to do so as the terrarium housing have yet to reach us. I tried a few boxes and ultimately recommend to my team the XL mailer box (35cm x 25cm x 12cm) from Packink as it provide ample space for our terrarium housing to be laid in the packaging. Also happening this week, I came out with a design for our Christmas theme terrarium. It also a struggle to do as the figurines like the terrarium housing is source from China. Without the terrarium housing and the figurines it is hard to produce a Christmas theme terrarium that is representative of our product.

Now that we secured the supplier for the packaging box, Jyn tasked me to continue with the workshop flow and create a box design.

Today we have our consultation with Mr Roderick and Mr Adrian. We update them about our progress. They asked us what is our target audience for our product to which we answered those who are new to terrarium making but have correlated interest (e.g like nature or like plants). They follow up by asking us if our product is positioned as a gift or a product to which the customer buy from themselves. We struggle with this question to which they advise us to make a choice as it is too ambitious to target everyone and the saying is "Catch all, loss all". Hence, they advise that we should really specific our target audience. They also asked us how do we measure our success and advise us to set goals that is not focus solely on profitability. They also advise us to be willing to experiment and told us to learn and adopt multiple roles instead of our present department based silo.

In this week meeting, I unveil a new logo for our business as we fear copyright infringement from our previous logo. The group is largely receptive of the logo with the exception of the hand of the logo. To which I respond by telling them I will work on it.

Also happening in this week meeting, I advised to the group to abandon the plan for a box design as it is expensive, price for 100 pcs of mailer box raise from $180 to $430. This means that we are paying $4.3 for the box alone which at our pricing of $29.9 per DIY terrarium kit is absurd. In the end we decided to do a packeting sleeve to wrap around the box instead.

I also run through with the team the flow of the workshop through a partially done presentation slides. Essentially the flow of the workshop is as follows:

1. Item Checklist to check if participants have all the essential

2. Explaining our plants and terrarium housing

3. Step by step guide to making the terrarium

4. Caring for your terrarium

Section 3 and 4 is incomplete as we need our actual terrarium housing and figurines as illustration for the step by step guide for it to be representative of our product. As section 4 is a complex topic, we also need more research to ensure that our recommendation is accurate and useful for our customers.

Today is the team's first cohesion at Jyn house, the terrarium housing and figurines have also just arrived at his place. We found that some of the casing may be too small to add things like pebble. Hence, Jyn thought of a "Classic" product line where it is more affordable than our existing terrarium kit as we remove the pebble and moss layer for this product line. Jyn asked me on the spot to immediately design a mock design.

At his place, I unveil the design for the packaging sleeve. The team like the design and the incorporation of Linktree (A QR Code allow users to assess a collection of links instead of just a single link). However, they also question the lack of instruction without using Linktree and suggested that i create a back side to the sleeve and add an instruction guide and a terrarium care section.

In this week, I competed the back side of the packaging and the workshop slides and immediately began work to film a workshop video with Jyn and Stevenson. Both Stevenson and I wanted the video to be make available for our consumer while Jyn only wanted the video to show to Roderick on how the workshop will be conducted. Stevenson was chosen as the host for the film as he possess the best public speaking skills. We spend hours filming the video. The filming took days and sadly due to a mismatch in our schedule, we decide to do a retake of the video with me being the host in the video and hence on 6th January, I went to Jyn's house together with Gabriel to retake the video. I also took the opportunity to design a Chinese New Year theme terrarium while I am filming for the video.

In this week, I was formally asked by Jyn to be in charge of the programming of the terrarium workshop which we believe will form the bulk of our sales in the future. As the packaging sleeves supplier in Singapore charge exorbitant price for minimum MoQ, we decide to source supplier from China. However, that means we need to wait for at least a month for the sleeves to come. To circumvent the issue, Jyn asked me to create stickers that is to be stick to the box, This stickers features a QR code which will allow our customers to access our slides that teaches them how to make the terrarium on their own. In the end we create a few sticker designs and pass a list of supplier to Jyn.

Richmond, Qi Qi and myself meet up twice this week to design and take photos of our Chinese New Year and Valentine day terrariums. After we completed the design of the terrarium, pass the list of items (i.e figurines and ornament) to Gabriel who will help source for these items. The photo taken will also be handed over to Qi Qi and Stevenson to create marketing posters.

In view that we are going to host terrarium workshop soon, I decided to organise a workshop to train our team on how to make terrarium as well as learn how other established businesses conduct their workshop. In compliance to the safe distancing measures, I split the team into two team to attend the workshop at difference timing. We all had fun and picked up on techniques on how to making terrarium as well as hosting a workshop.

Today, Richmond, Qi Qi, and I hosted Felix Natura's first ever workshop. This is a workshop for WePack, a logistic firm. We had 10 participants for the workshop and I am the overall coordinator for the workshop. As WePack does not want to dirty up their place, we decided to book a tutorial room in NTU's Hive to conduct the workshop. Jyn and Gabriel help deliver the logistic to the venue as well as helped us with the clean up. The whole workshop lasted for an hour and a half and I am glad to hear that the participants enjoyed the process as much as we did. The process is smooth however, we did encounter a problem and that is we have forgotten to provide paper bags for our participants. Thankfully, they are not too bothered with it.

The focus of this week's meeting is on the presentation deck of our business showcase. As we are a big group and only have 15 minutes to present, we decide to cover only the essential in the presentation. As the purpose of the presentation was to share our entrepreneurship experience with the next batch, we decided to cover subjects like the goals, as well as challenges face by each of the department.