Break down of work carried out in April 2022 - Arroz Merchandise and Store
Project members :[ @lamour]&[ @laurapnz]
We had a successful start in the store for April 2022 with daytime markets proving to work well in particular. Members are beginning to earn money from their products as well as adding back to the community, so our concept is progressing. We had a great member of staff working with us, however unfortunately due to other work commitments that member of staff has had to stop working in the store. So this month we managed to find another staff member to work the hours around studying during the day, which is more suitable. We had a lot of applicants for the role via social media alone, so we spent a day conducting interviews and where possible we were able to try and employ applicants in other areas of the studios.
We are working with the new shop staff to help and encourage them to take on the project as their own as well as just selling during opening hours. We decided on this particular person as they have more of an awareness and background in social media, photoshoots, fashion as well as shop and extensive sales experience. A huge benefit is that the new member also has experience with NFT and working with and helping create online selling platforms, which will also be incorporated into the role.
Finding the right staff member has had its trials and errors and we have needed to go through this process to help understand what type of person and skill level the shop role requires. The hours are quite ad hoc and the person needs to really want to be involved in the community and have an interest in building a store along with fulfilling any creative needs of their own within the community. We found that offering the option of incorporating their own ideas into the store and them becoming part of the decision making was necessary for the role. Other roles and learning opportunities such as taking charge of building further online selling platforms and social media/photoshoots are also a way of the staff having further involvement. This will inevitably help with improvements and progression of the shop as they can dive head first into the role and work with other members of the Arroz team also.
Laura @laurapnz and i @lamour have been spending time working on the mint base store and uploading new items outside of our own work, however we feel this role will need to ideally be passed onto the new staff member as a more full time role and weekly maintenance is required in order for it to be a success along with promotion. An idea being discussed is to also add the mintbase store onto the Arroz website as a tab, this will provide more exposure to the selling of Arroz merchandise and store products as well as NFTs. We will be incorporating the option of NEAR payment online with this and any other selling platforms that we use also.
Our new Arrox merchandise t-shirts have received great feedback and now we are coming into the Summer schedule at Arroz with lots of events happening, this will provide lots of opportunities to get more merchandise exposure. We are now going to be having daytime markets every Sunday and this is a great opportunity for us as these are our best selling days, we even have a great new specialized plant product in store from our lovely, hardworking cleaner/caretaker here at Arroz!. Along with this we are excited to start getting the new products on our online store along with mint base.
We decided to improve the shop also by adding some color for the summer and the back wall is a bright yellow! as the store is based more internally we wanted to add more color to attract attention and so far it’s working. We have also been sourcing and adding in some further found items to display products and incorporating better ways to display prints. In the meantime we are brainstorming ideas and waiting on further feedback on shop improvements with the new staff member rather than making final decisions such as signage and interior decor at this stage. We are looking to build and grow and make sure the clientele of the Arroz studios are making most of the store. However new merchandise, online and physical ideas are always in process with Laura @laurapnz and myself @lamour. We will be in touch soon!