HOW TO RUN AN XS EVENT 1. First decide on a product line/brand to represent (i.e. Just Nutrilite, or Just XS). Personally, I don’t like mixing, just because I find it confuses customers (they don’t know if I’m selling energy drinks or nutrition products, or if I represent Nutrilite or XS) and potential contacts (it’s easier to explain that XS or Nutrilite is just one part of a bigger business, outside of an event setting). 2. Once you’ve decided what brand you want to focus on, figure out what you want to sell. For us, we focused on XS and XS Smoothies. The reason we decided to focus on XS was because we thought it was a great foot in the door for Gen Y; plus we figured our target market for XS (athletes that appreciate a healthy energy drink option) would also appreciate Nutrilite products (that we can sell them when we contact them after the even). Planning for XS Smoothie Events If you decide to do the smoothies, make sure you plan it well. What we did was we went to a Costco (it’s a North American big-box bulk retailer), bought a bunch of bags of frozen fruit, mango pulp, milk, etc, and we recorded the cost/serving of everything. For example, if we bought a 1kg bag of frozen mangos for $6.99; we’d weigh out 1 cup of frozen mangos on a scale, and if 1 cup of mangos weighed 100gs, I’d know that if I had 1 cup of mangos in a smoothie it’d cost $0.69, and that if I wanted to sell 100 smoothies, I’d have to buy 10 bags. Once we had all the costing done, we got our team together one evening, and put together a bunch of different flavour combinations, that didn’t cost more than $1.60 per 16-oz smoothie (we decided on $1.60 because it seemed to be the average cost of two helpings of fruit, or ice, with XS). Keep in mind, we don’t have XS Blast Mixers in Canada, so to make the smoothies profitable, we included only ¼ a can of XS in each smoothie (that’s still 20g of caffeine and 1000+% Vitamin B12 – so still plenty of energy). We found the sweet spot for pricing a smoothie was roughly $4.00 in Canada. So we knew that we’d have $2.60 profit per smoothie; this helped us gauge which events we wanted to take on – especially if there was a cost for having a spot at the event. For example, we had a two-day Dragonboat Race two weeks ago that cost us $700 to register; so we realized that to break even, we’d have to sell 270 smoothies ($700 / $2.60). We then weighed that against how many patrons that event statistically pulled in; for an event that has multiple vendors, we typically estimate capturing 1%-5% of the population, for events where we’re the only vendor, we typically estimate capturing 25%-45% of the population. The organizers of the Dragonboat Race we did, informed us they usually have 2,500 participants and spectators, so we estimated 250 smoothies per day (500 total); and at the end of the event we sold out (it’s always better to sell out than to have left over produce). For JUST XS (No smoothies) If you’re planning on focusing just on the energy drinks, as opposed to the smoothies, you definitely will have less risk (no produce to worry about), less capital costs (don’t need to buy blenders), and your customers are trying your actual product (the XS, as opposed to a smoothie with XS). That being said, if we’re doing a smoothie booth, we definitely also sell cans of XS. We also do a lot of sampling so that we can pick up contacts for potential customers. At the end of the day, we approached XS events as a venue to make contacts – that was our primary goal; we sold the smoothies, not so much for the profits (though they’re great!), but to recover the costs of being there. 3. Booking your event (for those that you think will be profitable); obviously the first step should be contacting the event organizer and getting more details of the event. Some key things I ask are (i) are we going to be the only energy drink there (this is a must, in my opinion, if you’re doing XS)?, (ii) can we be the exclusive smoothie provider at the event?, (iii) will there be other beverage stalls at the event? (iv) How much time will we have to setup/tear-down? (v) where will I be located (if you’re in a row of tents, try to get a corner)? The next step would be to contact Amway for approval. For Canada, we have an events form we fill up and send to the corporation; we then get back a license to sell Amway products that we have to display at our booth. They also have lots of resources for you; for example, if your event organizer requires you to have liability insurance (most municipal-run events would), we are able to get that through the Amway IBOAI once we’ve been approved for the event. Only after I receive confirmation from Amway would I pay the organizer for the booth. 4. Setting up your booth; again, I can only really give you my views on setting up an XS booth. But I’d recommend focusing the bulk of your budget on items that’ll draw attention to your booth (i.e. big XS banners). Things I saw on the Australian/New Zealand Xsgear website that are similar to what I purchased: xsgear.co.nz/store/productDetails.asp?pid=2737&cid=1 – This banner not only will draw attention, but will also act as ¾ height wall for your tent – which is a perfect place to have your table with blenders against (if you’re doing smoothies), or your stock of XS). xsgear.co.nz/store/productDetails.asp?pid=2733&cid=1 – The teardrop banner is a great way to get extra attention. I purchased the 8ft banner as opposed to the 12ft, I figured the extra $35 could go towards something else, and 8ft is definitely tall enough to get attention. xsgear.co.nz/store/productDetails.asp?pid=2736&cid=1 – The retractable banner; also great way of getting attention up front. Things I did not buy from XSGear: (i) the XS tent – we just bought a generic tent from a local hardware store for $80; (ii) XS table cloths – we honestly just purchase black bed sheets, and used that as our table drapes; (iii) XS cups – the ‘Get Blasted’ XS cups are $12.95 for 100 cups, plus lids are another $3.99 for 100 lids; that works out to being roughly $0.17 per cup… we found a supplier of plain plastic 16-oz cups that cold us 1,000 cups and 1,000 lids for $70, which works out to only $0.07 – which is some significant savings if you’re thinking about selling 500+ smoothies. Additional things you’ll need: (i) If you’re doing a smoothie event, make sure you have a banner that says smoothies (or “energy smoothies”). (ii) A ballot box – this is how we capture a lot of contacts; we get them to fill a small ballot with their contact details, for a chance to win a variety case of XS. You can just use an empty variety case to collect the ballots. (iii) Something to keep XS cool (for the cans you’re going to sell/sample) – we just bought a big ice bucket, and used the XS decals (xsgear.co.nz/store/productDetails.asp?pid=2070&cid=1) to brand it. The way we usually setup our tent: 1 wall (the main wall) is a display of XS Cases, XS Cans, an XS Energy banner hanging off the table, and our custom made Energy Smoothies banner hanging over top. We usually also keep printed literature on XS (I believe there’s a .pdf or .ppt file on Amway that you can get this info from; there’s also lots of downloadable content from xsgear that’s free), its ingredients, benefits, etc,. The second wall is the cash register, our Ice Bucket of XS, a large energy drink comparison chart I printed on a foam board, and our list of smoothies we’re offering for the day. Our third wall has the ballot box, more xs cans, the ballots, and pens. The fourth wall is taken up by the giant XS banner mentioned above. 5. Running your event; in my opinion, you’ll need at least three people to run a smoothie event: (i) one person on cash, (ii) one person making the smoothies, and (iii) one person to build a relationship with the patron and get the contact at the end. If you can get a fourth person, they can be your “promoter” at the front/main display. At the end of the day though, the person who’s going to follow up with the contacts should be the person at the end talking to the contact. Before actually running your event, walk through the process of how someone will buy an XS/smoothie from you, and see if you have everything you need. For us, the process starts with our promoter at the main table, they’re usually educating the customer about why XS is a healthy energy drink in comparison to brands like Red Bull and Monster; he then walks the customer over to the cashier. The cashier will collect the money from the customer, and write the customer’s name on a plastic cup with a permanent marker. We have three smoothie flavours: spinach, mango, and strawberry, so we have three colours of markers – green, orange, and red; which will indicate what flavour the person ordered. We also keep track on a separate piece of paper what orders we’ve taken, so we know how successful our flavours are, and so that we can reconcile our sales to our cash at the end of the day. Once the smoothie is made, it’s given to the customer at the pickup table, which is also where they’d fill up a ballot. That’s pretty much everything I’ve got on XS events; if you want to see some pictures from our events (to get more ideas, etc,), feel free to visit facebook/energysmoothies2GO. We’ve posted a bunch of pictures from our events there. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me. Cheers, Krish
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 05:24:40 +0000
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