selling water at sunken grandstand

what i thought would be a normal medical mission day turned out to be one of those notable, almost-embarrassing-but-not-quite, learning experiences in UP.

okay, here goes. i didn't wake up to the ear-splitting sound of my alarm, so i was really late when my mom came up to my room to wake me up. i had to rush to buy ice for the cooler to keep the bottles of water cold. we were supposed to sell water at the medical mission, for a little fund-raiser, but when i got there, many patients already finished with their medical exams and only few were left to sell water to (and that was still 7.30 in the morning!).

i was getting worried that we wouldn't be able to sell at least half of those water bottles. it would be a waste of effort, time, money. and i can't store this much water, what would i do with this? what would the org do with this, anyway?a few people bought water from us, but we didn't anticipate that many of the patients would be bringing their own baon.

it was nearing 11 am and i was getting desperate. we have to sell the water. no more patients were coming.

i had the idea of selling the water at the nearby tianggian, just beside the parish. so we carried bottles of water (my companions jason and chris hauled the cooler) to the tianggian, only to find out that there weren't too many shoppers, and potential buyers of water.

i told them, why don't we go to the sunken garden? most probably more people would be walking around than in the tianggian. so we hauled the cooler and the water again, took a jeepney ride to vinzons. amae, one of my companions, even tried to sell water to the passengers, but most of them just grinned and chuckled at us.

yep, we were there. i had to muster the courage, charm, and guts to sell water to strangers. it was like jumping inside a well--i wouldn't know how it feels and what it is until i really did it.

at first, we tried to sell the water wholesale to vendors, but they were already selling water, and it came by delivery. ooh, i wanted to give up, because who in the world would buy from us? and isn't selling here without a permit illegal?

but the very customers we wanted were right there in sunken: playing and running in the field like fishes swimming in a pond. we just had to go fishing to reel in our catch. hehe. football players were practicing and playing in sunken.

so we brought our water to sunken grandstand. we conquered a small corner for ourselves. as i learned, location is vital to a business, and we have to bring our products to where our comsumers could easily get them, right? and we would be the nearest water-sellers to them than all our other competition if we stay there, since vendors were teeming all over the place.

peddling water to strangers isn't such an easy task as i thought it would be, after all. i told myself, kaya ko 'to, ano pa bang hindi ko kaya?

i smiled (with all the charm i could gather), carried two bottles of water in my hand, walked up to strangers, and announced, "tubig po. ten pesos lang. pwede pa ang discount." and sweetly tried to peddle and sell like it was my life.

a girl was oblivious that i would be selling so cheap, because these are branded absolute. i told her we just wanted to sell. and she asked how much i would give the water to her if she bought eight. i said, "sige, bili ka ng pito libre isa." that makes p8.75 each. bless her, she did buy seven bottles. i was elated. this is a good omen.

i peddled to the football players, and some i joked with. but it wasn't break time, and some haven't even started playing yet, so one told me, "bumalik kayo 'pag gumagapang na sila."

many of the football players brought along their own water. but the some who didn't, bought from us. during breaks and after they played, we were selling like hotcakes.

and i didn't realize how much thirsty they got after playing until i saw how many one would buy at a time: two or three bottles, every break. what an experience. in just about two hours, we sold out. one even remarked that we should come back at 1.30. but we had no more water to sell, and we would be tired by then.

in the end, we earned even more than what we thought we could. i don't want to count figures in public, but we underestimated how much we could earn.

we joked among ourselves, if this was so lucrative, why don't we come back every weekend? we could even add gatorade, extra joss, rush, etc., to our list of products. haha.

this experience taught me that in business, patience is a virtue. waiting for two hours just to sell every bottle of water we had don't amount to much after we sold out. and the bonding experience was something else, too. i shared jokes while we were waiting for someone to buy from us, and near-tears when i thought we couldn't sell even just one bottle, with my friends.

and does counting cute football players count, too? hehe.