Yesterday's flea at Jazz@Southbridge was a flop. Seriously. I didn't make up my rental man.

The publicity for it was rather lousy although one cannot deny the organiser's efforts. It just wasn't smartly done.

I'm tired of complaining...was even wondering whether blogging about it would be a complete waste of my effort or not. Ah well...let me just tell you the main points that irritated me and it is mainly the way the 2 younger organisers (there were 3) handled the issue.

The crowd was minimal and were made up mostly of relatives and friends of stall holders + relatives and friends of band members. The walk-in crowd was terrible. Well, no brainer since its at Boat Quay on a Sunday afternoon.

But publicity!!! Ok...let me recount certain things to show how ridiculous the whole publicity and marketing issue was.

As the crowd was terrible, I kinda rallied some of the stall holders to hold a petition to ask the organisers to give us a discount on the rental. So...towards the end of the flea, 2 of the organisers went around to get feedback on the flea.

Irritation no. 2 (no. 1 is the lack of crowd) is that they asked us to start packing up @ 5.45pm? If you advertise that the flea is from 1-6pm, why are you asking us to pack up at 5.45pm? Its more like you want us to leave by 6pm right? Nonetheless, the lack of crowd just encouraged us to pack up immediately.

In the midst of packing, Mel Li asked one of the younger organisers (let's call her A) whether we could sit down and talk to them after the packing's done. Irritation no. 3 happens soon....once I was done packing (small pieces of jewellery can be a pain sometimes), A and the other young organiser (let's call her G) came to us and A went, "Ya, what is it?" in a super roll-eyes-I'm-not-happy tone. That's sooo freaking rude!

Major irritation starts henceforth. Best to put it in a conversation method. Note that not everything is verbatim. This is to the best of my memory.

A: We've participated in a lot of other fleas/ bazaars and we never asked the organisers for refunds.

G: Ya. Big Splash - raining, we didn't ask for any refunds!

Me (thinks): Uh...that's really your problem for not being proactive and demanding the organisers for a partial refund right? We're not even asking for a full refund AND who the hell cares about your past experience? I'm talking about THIS present issue and problem. Why are your hands folded and you girls giving us such aggressive tone and body language? Coming guns ablazing? SUPER unprofessional ladies.

We prodded them about their marketing and publicity and A rattled on about how they advertised on all the forums and emall.sg etc. Plus they had a banner outside the event space and they walked to Funan Centre and Central to hand out pamphlets to tell them about the flea.

Ladies - online forums are used mainly by stall holders. What's shocking is that there wasn't any in house marketing with Jazz@Southbridge for a whole week! Jazz@Southbridge is one of the most reputable Jazz bars in Singapore and they've got such a steady clientele, which could be tapped into! IS Mag? Catalog mag? Shops around the vicinity?? Shocking.

What continued was a back and forth that really sounded like something from a "How NOT to negotiate" video. I'm too tired to type it in full. However, in a nutshell - there was no resolution. They had made a loss on this flea so they can't refund any amt of $ and it was only after further prodding that the older organiser said that what she can assure is a privilege for current stall holders for the next flea.

Uh huh. -_- If the next bazaar @ Hereen is like this, I'm sooo gonna negotiate till those little boys pee in their pants.

Haha...yesterday made me realise that I've lost a lot of my aggressiveness that was developed while working. I've mellowed down. A lot. That being said, I still don't take shit from people but I also remember all my negotiation skills. Ok...I shall stop. There's more. However, not worth me typing.

The good thing about this flea was that I met three lovely teens - Kelly, Kim and Desiree! Thanks for making yesterday a lot more bearable. :)