Team:Shanghai Metro/Fundraising
Fundraising
VIPatent is the first team in China to investigate the patented strain protection
technology based on type VI secretion system effectors. In the early field research of the project, we found
that most people do not have any knowledge about the strain protection patent because it is relatively far
away from people's lives, so to better promote this technology to people and raise funds for the project for
both wet and dry labs we have designed our peripheral products exclusively for VIPatent, and started to
promote and sell them both online and offline.
We designed several different peripherals in the early days, including canvas bags,
notebooks, stickers, tiny mirrors, puzzles, and post-its. We printed our team's logo and images on these
peripherals to create a unique peripheral and promote our technology better. After the design, we looked for
the manufacturer's contact and communicated with them about the price and style of mass production.
As soon as the peripherals arrived, we sold and promoted
them both online and offline. On the online side, we made a poster showing all our peripherals and
annotating the prices besides, and put our team members' contact information at the bottom of the poster, so
people could buy our peripherals just by scanning the QR code, and we also provided express delivery, so
people from all cities could buy them. After the posters were made, the team members promoted them on
various social media, such as WeChat, Weibo, etc. In the end, according to the statistics, we bought a total
of more than two thousand dollars online.
On the offline side, we made two easy-to-open banners with
our project and team introduction, and then we contacted various stores for a place to sell our peripherals.
After a comparison of price and customer flow, we finally decided to choose a cat cafe. They lent us a piece
of land for sale and promotion, and we paid the entrance fee. The beginning of the sale was not as smooth as
the online sale. On the contrary, the offline sale no one to buy, we began to draw inspiration and ideas
from the previous failed experience, using the discount method to attract people's attention. We asked
people who passed by and were interested in the periphery to fill out a questionnaire and help them reduce
the price accordingly, and we only ended up selling a small percentage of them in this way.
Although the offline sales situation isn't as good as the
online, in the process we also learned a lot, such as how to communicate with people and think about what
price is appropriate from their point of view, and offline, most of the people who did not buy filled out
the questionnaire, we also found that people's lack of knowledge in this area, which also highlights the
significance of our technology, and the benefits of popularizing it to people.