For 4 years now, the Children’s Business Fair has germinated the 3 Magic Seeds of Entrepreneurship in many a young entrepreneur. The thrill of creating something on their own, selling it safely to a stranger (having a stranger see value in their creation) and earning their own money is an empowering and valuable learning process. Having been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, young entrepreneurs were fired up when the time came around again this year.
A CBF with a Difference
This year, however, was a unique experience for sellers and buyers alike as the much-anticipated CBF was taken online for the first time in ActonKL’s history! This entailed a whole new set of preparations. Alongside preparing their products, marketing, and pricing, young entrepreneurs also had to pick up the new skill of online sales through a Facebook group. This was no mean feat for some who had never even used Facebook before.
The uniqueness of the situation piqued the interest of the press and the event was featured in The Star – a huge boost to the confidence of the young entrepreneurs. Read the full article here.
Leading Up – Preparations and Simulations
To familiarize the young entrepreneurs with their new platform, weekly simulations were held to figure out things like posting effective, eye-catching posts, locating their products quickly and easily and replying to the appropriate ‘chat’. Practise makes progress and by the week of the event, they were much more confident with the platform and ready to SELL!
The Sale Begins
Come 12.15pm, the scenes in various homes around KL were similar: young entrepreneurs parked in front of their devices, ready to sell, sell, sell. Some had books to record their sales in, some had spreadsheets set up on their devices. When the buyers came in at 12.30, furious typing ensued and the fair was off and running.
As it is every year, there was a huge variety of products on sale. On the food front, brownies, bakchang, healthy cookie dough, sambal, cakes and good old-fashioned popcorn and lemonade made up some of the offerings. There were even recipes on sale for healthy Bliss Balls that would occupy your children’s time and satisfy your snack cravings.
Other items included essential oil blends to sooth and invigorate, beautiful customised watercolour bookmarks, pretty decorative bowls, upcycled knick-knack holders, shirts honouring the frontliners fighting the good fight at this time, eco-friendly plant pots, hair accessories, customisable Kahoot games, grow-your-own vegetable kits, a book of short stories written by a budding author and an intriguing mystery e-book about a coffee empire.
You could really see that the young entrepreneurs were passionate about their products. Not being able to ‘sell’ their products face to face, they faced the challenge of featuring them in their best light in the one post that they had. The sales posts became important sales tools and took careful crafting. Figuring out how much information to put in, crafting enticing stories and ensuring enough information was included played a big part in assembling the posts, as did capturing eye-catching photos of their wares.
Another important skill to cinch sales was how the young entrepreneurs replied to their customers. Being on a virtual platform, interaction with customers was, in a way, more relaxed as the young entrepreneurs could take their time to read queries, figure out exactly what they wanted and craft their answers. This took a lot of pressure off.
Hear from some of the young entrepreneurs themselves as they muse about their first virtual selling experience and, for some of them, their first entrepreneurial experience:
Genie Joy Trading (Ee Nie, 14yo & Khye Gene, 10yo)
Sweet and savoury bakchang
First Time Young Entrepreneurs
We learnt a few things from CBFKL2020, our first online fair.
FOCUS – we were distracted during the start of the fair as my friend was calling me and bro was playing Minecraft at the same time. Then mum asked me to put the phone on airplane mode and gene to stop playing so we could focus on online enquiries. It’s important not to make customers wait.
COMMUNICATION – I started chatting with customers – they all seem like nice people, quick confirmation and smooth payment.
PREPARATION – We need to know the product, price, bundle, delivery information well before the fair. Being online is good because we have time to find out things we don’t know – we asked parents and google 😊
GREATEST ENJOYMENT – We both loved the sound of receipts being torn from the book, it makes us happy $$$$😊. Mom later shared with us that the customers and sales made in CBFKL is safe and secured because participants are screened and selected by admin. Strangers we meet outside might not be as nice and easy as this so we will have to be careful.
We look forward to next year…
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C’s Fruity Creations (Chanel, 8yo)
Fruit design papier mache bowls
First Time Young Entrepreneur
On the day I felt frustrated because no one was buying my bowl! Only my friend and my teacher! After a while, I felt happy because one of my gonggong’s friends came in and bought a watermelon bowl. In the end I got A BUNCH OF SALES! I HAD A FANTASTIC TIME! I would do CBF again! Next year I hope the CBF is in person because I like talking to people in real life.
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B.F.K. (Books for Kids) (Jasmine, 9yo)
Self-written books and handmade bookmarks
Second Time Young Entrepreneur
Why did you choose to sell books?
“I want to be an author when I grow up. So when I moved from my old school to Acton, I decided to be an author because I had a laptop which had documents to write stories on. I decided to put my passion in action! So I wrote stories and put them in books to sell.”
Did I do it myself?
“I did most of it myself, but my mum helped me talk to the printer so I could print out my stories. She also helped me take some pictures. I am happy to have my mum to help me!”
How did you feel on the day itself?
“I felt motivated and excited. I was also nervous, because I was scared something went wrong. I felt motivated and excited because I had 3 customers before the thing even started! One customer even had to pay me RM76 because she bought a lot!”
What did you feel went well?
“I felt that everything went well because I had good sales and the Facebook page was working well.”
What were the challenges?
“I had no challenges! As I said, the Facebook page was working completely fine and my sales went well too.”
Compare the actual CBF and the virtual CBF.
“The physical CBF I feel was harder because I had to make all of the books beforehand, and if I ran out of my products then I would have to make more if someone requested it. The virtual one I didn’t need to make any books beforehand, because I can make them when they order some.”
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A’s Sambal (Aqeesha, 17o)
Homemade Sambal
Fourth Time Young Entrepreneur
This year’s experience was quite different compared to the past 3 years due to the lockdown. I’ve had experience selling online but the difference is that this online CBF had timeframe. I enjoyed it as it was pretty laid back while selling/collecting orders. It obviously wasn’t noisy like having the fair in person. 
I got more orders than expected, so making all in a day and delivering the next was definitely a challenge-and I couldn’t have done it without my mom/family. Overall I had a good and memorable experience!
Having the CBF featured in The Star and making a YouTube video to get my ‘booth’ fee waived was a new experience. I had so much fun and it definitely was my favourite part of the CBF this year!
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Dhayna’s Chickpea Cookie Dough (Dhanya, 14yo)
Chickpea Cookie Dough
Second Time Young Entrepreneur
This year’s CBF was challenging but by the end of it, I learned a lot about marketing and decision-making. I learned the difference/balance between getting ideas from others and making the final decision myself.
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Jared, 8yo
Eco-Friendly Plant Pots
Third Time Young Entrepreneur
I got stressed up in the middle but was pretty excited at first when the queries started coming in. I had a fun time navigating the buying together with my PS Eagle and also eagerly waiting for my food orders to arrive 🙂 My friends and family who joined and interacted with the children were impressed with the fair and also did some shopping themselves.
Challenges:
1. I had hard time catching up with queries and could have missed out a few.
2. As I gave free pick-up as an option, I will need to sift through orders and contact the buyers individually by this week.
3. Ran out of one product early in the fair, however, I decided I wanted to still sell it but give a longer timeframe for making it and delivering.
Feedback:
1. Need to improve my customer service and say more than one word to my customers.
From the customer’s point of view:
“Kaleb enjoyed the CBF. He was eager to support his old schoolmates. He wanted to buy more but ran out of time. He’s anticipating his metal straws from Ra’ees!”
“I missed the ‘experience’ of the fair and sampling/looking at the product … I’m still old-school and like to touch, taste, smell etc. the product first :)”
“It’s easier to buy online because you have a written record of the transaction … it’s useful to keep track of your orders.”
“You don’t have to fight through crowds. It’s great!”
“Some of the postings were confusing and I ended up purchasing double of an item. Luckily the seller was understanding about the mixup and rectified it.”
“You can shop in your pyjamas. I love it.”
All in, it was a positive experience for buyers and sellers alike, and a fantastic learning experience for the young entrepreneurs forging out into our digital world. It proved that, come what may, the entrepreneurial spirit will rise above all adversity and triumph!