If you were to ask me how does it feel like being a vendor? Having an online business? I would say it's bitter sweet baby...
It's sweet when you see that people are happy wearing, flaunting, twirling in the dresses you sold to them, to see that your blog clicks are increasing gradually even by the minuscule of RM0.001 cent *_* but then it can be quite a hard blow when you close your accounts at the end of each bazaar realizing that not only you are unable to cover your rental for the weekend...in fact you are making a loss (Haiiikssss!) I don't take failures very well....sigh...
The experience I had in Square Market Bazaar was well..bitter sweet but it was all worthwhile...
During that short weekend, I have customers complimenting that I really know how to talk..to persuade (ahem...thanks to my excellent customer service background in previous company and well..I can be a smooth talker if I want to eheheheh ^_^) And many of them were very encouraging...quickly labeling me as 'a very enterprising young lady' and being courageous enough to try breaking the conventional perception of us vendors as lowly educated, simple-minded or from the 'low-class' group. There was also an incident that almost moved me to tears when a customer gently squeezed me by my arm...telling me how much she loves that dress she tried on but it was a little too tight for her and she is certain that I will be able to succeed in this business of mine, wishing me the best of luck before walking away. I guess these little gestures count for me...a lot! And these are my reasons for not quitting.
"The organizer always wins"...interesting heh? This is a question that a vendor threw to us at the closing of last week's slow weekend. Believe me, this organizer is not some sort of scam and I am not starting any bitchy-ranting here...this is just my 2 cents worth.
I am still a newbie in this bazaar thingy but I have seen and heard a lot of vendors expressing their dissatisfaction over these organizers who are the only few players in this scene. I have witnessed poor promotion planning whereby there was no banners to be seen around the bazaar area, no flyers, email or SMS blast of communication to reach the buying crowd. There was also unreasonable rules and regulations being put to vendors, for instance of only providing ONE chair for each booth, failed in being a little less rigid on the rule to a vendor who did not bring her own chair...I am not saying that this vendor is not to be blamed but what's done is done and she forgot to bring her own chair, can't there be a work-around for this instead of having her half-sitting, half squatting on her own luggage? How hard is it to politely remind this vendor to not repeat this mistake or give a stern warning that there will be no next time in doing a favor for her...we are talking about a chair...how blardy hard is it to find a chair in a shopping mall? But noooo...the organizer made its (pointless - in my opinion) stand, successfully sending a clear message of don't-mess-with-me strict organizer but it has also successfully created an impression of a popular bazaar with vendors sitting on the floor or sharing chairs in a high profile shopping mall...get it? Also, vendors are only given the option of either having one clothes rack and a table or 2 clothes racks with no table and the place given for each vendor can actually accommodate more than that. I fully understand and more than willing to cooperate when it comes to say cleanliness of the venue, not taking up other vendor's allocated space, etc but gawd...let it be reasonable!
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Organizers and vendors relationship is interdependent so why can't we work together to achieve a win-win situation? Having an organizer which takes care of issues with the bazaar venue management and secure crowd to come for the bazaar with proper promotion and communication and we as vendors having a place to market our items, make sales or just having a place of opportunity to shout out to all the nice people out there that we exist, our blogs exist, to proudly promote our own online business or physical stores.Or is this just me and my defining bimbo moment...?
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Me & my happy customers ^_^
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