i count money

This is my last post now. The journey of entrepreneurship is one that you will question.

Some questions that you may ask yourself when you attempt to brainstorm ideas/execute plans:

• Is this worth it?
• Will the sleepless nights pay off?
• Do I have the ability to execute such a 'fantastic' plan?
• I do not have the skills to start such a business.

The truth is, Entrepreneurship requires a passion and a belief that you will succeed. 90% of all start-ups fail, however the journey is one that is priceless. As I read through my blog, the memories of my team's moments and late night debates flowed through my mind. Would I go through it all over again? Yes, I will. In fact, 9135 has spurred my determination and drive to start more businesses in the future.

• Debates and heated arguments are parts and parcel of a startup. Founders might have different view and opinion of how things should be run. However, understanding different perspective is vital to overall growth of things.
• A solid team is one that will assure you of your inner insecurities. Good team members/ Co-founders are essential as we may not be skilled in all aspects of running a business. I was more technologically savvy, while my fellow co-founders were skilled in marketing and strategic decision making respectively.
• Important research needs to be done before you conduct any business. In my case, we had to source for the right suppliers and product design.
• 100% commitment , 100% effort. There are no shortcuts when you drive your business towards the horizons of success.
• Balance is key. Learn to take a step back from time to time as this might give you new ideas and creative solutions.

I hope you will benefit from your very own entrepreneurship journey.

Wishing you all the best in your business endeavors.

Do follow me on LinkedIn if you have any enquiries.

Bryan, signing out.

LinkedIn Profile : https://linkedin.com/in/bryanlimyuqiang/

Instagram : Peachy.Singapore

Instagram: @Bryanlimyuqiang

We have just ended our B50 business showcase. The project may have been just "another" project to others, however I am ever grateful to my co-founders who believed, pursued and gave their 110% percent for our business. Peachy started off from a concept and now, it is a full-fledged hype brand in NTU. I thank Jerald and You Hong who are also part time student venture analysts for their skills, ideas and debates throughout the journey. We thank Mr Roderick, Mr Adrian, Miss Lily, fellow B50 student entrepreneurs and guests for their time in listening to the story of Peachy. It was very touching as we went through our story and memories with our audience. The sleepless nights, debates and weekly meetings was certainly something that you might expect when you start your business and different people might bring different skill set, opinions and experience to the table. We were also lucky to have converted two audience into believer of Peachy as we close 2 more units of Sales after our sharing session. We would like to thank our supports and cold leads thus far and while entrepreneurship is a very tiring journey, it is one that is very satisfying as well.

Some of the things which are in the pipeline as we are intend to continue the business includes:

• NTU Micro-influencer marketing
• Sports Pageant Marketing
• Hall 4 Pageant lucky draw
• Increasing our product line & variety
• Increasing our exposure such as renting physical booths
• Reducing costs through purchase optimisation such as negotiating and ordering in bulk

These various strategies which are starting to run as of this week will improve our sales and overall profit in the coming quarter as we have managed most of our initial capital outlay and upfront marketing expenses.

Its D-1 day to our final presentation. While tomorrow may be a pit stop to ET9135-A, the founders of Peachy has agreed to bring the business beyond our "moon". We have decided to extend the business beyond the project and see how far we can go as a team. As I look through our photo gallery, memories flowed back and I am just amazed at how far we have traveled as a team. From our initial concept at Crescent hall to our actual shorts in the hands of our customers. We did it. While we are still a little distance away from reaching our target of 90 units by the end of the project, we know that we will reach there soon. Thanks to the team for the amazing work and experience. WE ARE ENTREPRENEURS!

We have launched our pre-order sales! Sales trajectory is slow and warm in nature. I would think that this is normal given that all start-ups will have to grind and spread the information to their close friends and relatives. We are glad that our inner circle are supportive of our plans. We have been travelling around Singapore to conduct photo shoots. While we may be utilizing the help of our influencers in the future, we believe that our founders will first need to set the stage for our social media outreach. We have also created an exclusive Mahjong humor video for our social media users. We have also reached a total of 1966 users in outreach this week! Something to celebrate for.

This week we have also made a sponsor approval to NTU Sports Pageant 2019. We feel that the event's audience is in line with Peachy's targeted audience as most of them are likely to participate in sports/ beach activities more than the usual crowd. This provides us a great avenue for Peachy to set up a solid presence with the NTU sports community. An interesting turn of events was how Jerald, You Hong and I were rushing down to the event after a Banking and Finance Recruitment forum and we were then invited to be judges of the dance segment for NTU Sports Bash 2019.

Year 2 Sem 1 has begun! Jerald, You Hong and I will be majoring in Banking and Finance (Platform-based learning). This means that we will be using financial machines such as Bloomberg Terminal and Thomson Reuters Machine heavily. This also means that we might have lesser time to focus on Peachy. However, we are confident that we will be able to balance our workload as we gain traction of awareness and sales once our influencer campaign and word-of-mouth strategy sets in!

The past few months have been hectic nonetheless! I took a short break and embarked on my road trip up north. I visited my friend's processed food factory and understood the manufacturing process of her plant. She also shared with me about how production can be optimised and sales of such businesses can be increased through sufficient brand awareness and market outreach. I believe Peachy is on track to reaching our ideal target awareness through the various social media marketing strategies that we employed.

I also took some time off to try my hands at the Genting Casino *smirks*. I was set with 50 Ringgit lesser as I drove on to Kuala Lumpur.

A photo of me after praying for business and academic success at the temple near Genting!

Our team has also created a National Day shoot during our last 'Tonight let you huat' photoshoot. We wish all Singaporeans a Happy National Day! ' Be Bold, Be Peachy' is definitely a statement that we wish all Singaporeans will be!

I was away last week as I had Orientation camp duties. The team had a photo shoot session for the Gardens by the bay collection when I was away. I took the time to promote about the shorts to the fellow committee and discuss how the hall can partner with Peachy for future events. A turn of events and I was then able to get a partnership with the Hall's Pageant committee. This was a good opportunity for us as we had always wanted to start our social media campaigns on the right audience. Pageants who carry our product will better show off our designs and influence their peers to make purchases! We look forward to seeing Hall 4 Pageants strut in our fashionable shorts!

YES, that is right, we are in collaboration with NTU SPORTS BASH 2019! Great thanks to Beverley who is the Head Business Manager for the event in reaching out to Peachy for our first strategic partnership! We are excited to see how our product will look on the pageants as they strut down the club's walking platform. The sports community is a bonus for us as we seek to penetrate the brand into the minds of NTU sports people!

The team travelled to the vicinity of Kallang Wave Mall today where we did our 'God of Gamblers' promotional video and product photoshoot for our exclusive Mahjong shorts, 'Tonight let you huat'. The last we heard, one of our buyers actually got a 'One of a kind suit' after he placed his order!

We had met at 9pm and the team appeared like they are at Changi Airport. Some of our good 'shots' are on the right hand side of this post! It was a good photoshoot and we ended the session with a good team lunch !

I had the opportunity to visit another startup as part of SGTech Learning journey. I also had various entrepreneurship discussions with other student entrepreneurs from local universities. I had the opportunity to pitch about what we do at Peachy and how we can innovate to improve our product offerings and cost efficiencies. I am inspired by fellow student entrepreneurs on how they implemented various strategies across a wide range of businesses that they helm.

Spark Systems is a tech startup aimed at improving the efficiencies of Forex trading.

Our China Supplier communicated with us on Alibaba today that they were some production issues with our Gardens by the bay collection. You Hong had rejected the design and we will be facing some slight delays and hence this means that we will be postponing our photography shoot for our last design until the production is settled. >_>

Time is tight and we hope our social media engagement can stall us some time.

We had even more MEETINGS at my place. Yes that is right, our team's 6th meeting. We met to discuss about the future growth plans of the business such as should we embark on influencer marketing, evaluating our packaging materials and how we can improve our premium feel for our users. This picture is extremely relatable as three of us are serious student entrepreneurs who knows that Steve Jobs once begun in his garage!

Things are going as planned and we can only plan ahead!

Jerald and You Hong invited me to their internship office in July. We conducted weekly meetings till the late hours for some weeks now. Our concept now is to add value to our product as our unit cost was high. This meant that our pricing strategy had to be price skimming as we wanted to obtain a higher margin such that the business is sustainable. Jerald had proposed the concept of adding a bookmark and a sticker.

We have into our pre-ordering phase! This week was extremely rewarding as our video was a hit among our own internal circle of social media influence. We managed to hit a total of 1910 profile visit this week. The combined effort of the team was commendable.

We have received a total of 23 confirmed orders. This would help us alleviate our overall costs of $2,200. Our limited capital would mean that this strategy was ideal to the overall sustainability of the business as we were able to keep cash for other expenses such as marketing and packaging.

I tried my best in being a model for the business :_)

We went to Sentosa this week for our first photo shoot! We have decided to postpone our influencer marketing plans we attempt to bootstrap the business and hence we became the models of our business ourselves. Thanks to You Hong's Sister for the mad photography skills. We went sourcing for a good venue from Saphire Pavillion to the next beach. We found a good spot eventually. We also came up with one of our main videos for our pre-order segment. I hope the video conversion will turn out good! We treated Youhong's sister to a great dinner near Vivo city.

We have just paid for the domain name of our business! A commitment of 1 year is set in the stone! As I experience in the technology domain, I was in charge of designing the initial look and functionality of our website! Our customers will be able to view our catalogue as they are channeled through our social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram. We have thought of Carousell and other alternatives to increase our reach. However, we are aware that Carousell may dilute our brand as there were a lot of second hand buyers who are looking for a cheap thrill rather than a quality product. We hope our website can give our users a good impression of the effort and tenacity we are investing into the business!

Do check us out at https://peachy.sg/

We have received our first sample today and we were disappointed as the colour and cutting of the shorts was not designed as we had intended it to be.

We contacted the supplier and the supplier told us that we would need to submit Pantone range colour codes so that the colour of our shorts would be accurate. This is something to note if you are interested in manufacturing garment or apparel! We had a little meeting at You Hong's house and measured the exact measurements for our cutting. We then submitted our new measurements and colour.

We hope that that the next order will not be delayed as our photography and video plans have been set. Tight schedule ahead however, such circumstances are unavoidable when one starts a business in the real world! We can only learn to adapt and find the most ideal strategy to overcome the situation! Great lesson learnt!

We have begun to negotiate and filter our list of suppliers. Jerald and Elizabeth are working on the response of our marketing surveys. We had weekly meetings to discuss and shortlist our initial designs as well. While we have decided on 2 designs initially, we have decided to bring our one of our additional design to reality. While we like our original idea of 'Ang Ku Kueh', our market survey on instagram poll based on a sample size of 100 proved us otherwise. Our close friends and members have feed backed that they preferred Hidden gems and Mahjong as it was a fresh concept among the local flavour apparel business in Singapore.

We have decided to make our very own exclusive Hidden gems, Mahjong and Gardens by the bay shorts. We believe that our market survey response would predict the preference of our customers.

We have just completed our exams and I am working on my internship as I work on the strategic pipeline for Peachy. I was originally responsible for liasing with suppliers with regards to production however I am glad that You Hong has the time to manage on my part. This is so that production would be speedy and delays are minimised. Dipped my hands into exchange rates and negotiation for the least!

Concurrently, we are also planning for our marketing campaigns and partnership strategies. I am so excited to see our plans executed!

Exams has just ended a week ago and that marks the end of year 1. I have started my internship with PinAlpha Pte Ltd as of today and it really busy having to manage learning 3 different programming languages within a week. I have since switch roles with Jerald and took on the role of Chief Finance Officer.

I will be preparing a separate bank account to manage the cash flows of Peachy Co. The internship at PinAlpha was inspiring as it was a tech start-up. Working in the start-up gives me a glimpse of the effort and dedication that founders would have to invest into their passion and business. I have learnt how financing of the startup is vital to the sustainability of overall operations.

While Peachy may be a small-capital business, we might face issues such as high production batch purchase cost. This might mean that we may need to employ a fund-raising strategy such as up-front payment/ pre-order strategy with our interested buyers!

*PinAlpha Pte Ltd is a tech company aimed at using Artificial intelligence to analyse financial articles and make price predictions on equity pricing. *

We had our first presentation today. It went well and we were glad that we have received many constructive feedback from the class. I presented on our strategy for supply chain and finance.

Sir Roderick pointed out many valid pointers with regards to supply chain management and financial control for our products. Firstly, in terms of supply chain management, we would need to clarify with our suppliers on our requirements. Roderick mentioned that are actually more color bases that we will need to account for. The increase in colour bases will affect lead time and unit costs. I will be checking with our selected supplier over the period.

We are certainly feeling peachy right now!

The idea of Peachy was conceived at Crescent Hall! We had conducted an urgent team meeting as we had to finalise the type of business that we were looking to enter. I had prior experience in managing customised jewellery and the team was keen on doing a customised jewelry business as the profit margins was good. However, I was bent on the idea as we needed people who have the experience in making such bracelets as a one-man production would eventually lead to bottlenecks. We then looked at various inspiration such as Toxic Friends from NTU. This this sparked the idea that since the customised shirt market was highly saturated, we wanted to penetrate the shorts market instead. We had our meeting from 9am to 3pm, during which, we then discussed ' How can we make things Peachy ?' Voila, the idea of Peachy was thus created.