Thursday was the day we got over the major hurdles. No question about it…
I started by meeting with Katie from Costume Craze. To be honest, I was really nervous. She gave a really fantastic presentation at my Entrepreneur Lectures for Women class, and from that, I had seen how detailed and organized her business is. So I wanted to present her with some really thought-out options, and see what she would be willing to do.
We were interested in having her Santa hats in our kiosk, as well, that the Santa Suit was seriously crucial to our delivery concept. And so, I invoked principles 2- utilize negotiation to create win-win situations and 3- find a way that required costs can pay for themselves.
A note about the negotiation: personally, I think there is a world of difference between negotiation and manipulation. And it’s all about the intent and how you treat the individual and the transaction.
George Ross, of The Apprentice-Donald Trump fame, taught a lecture at BYU a few weeks ago, and gave us a really thorough look into how to negotiate good deals. The most important thing is that both parties feel comfortable, I think, and happy with the end result, and that you’ve created an ethical situation.
So anyway, we did work out an arrangement that was agreeable, and I realized that when we’re done with the suit, it can likely can be re-sold, thus paying for itself. Which is definitely nice.
We also found an additional vendor– Sweet & Charming, a line of really cute princess/fairytale-themed clothing, books, and toys for children.
After that meeting, I had another meeting again at the Provo Towne Centre mall. By the way, just in the few talks I’d had with them already, I was really impressed with the efficiency and organization of their staff. I have never really thought about what it takes to run a mall, but I’m sure it’s a hardy effort. And they do an extremely nice job.
I went to this meeting knowing that it wasn’t really financially feasible for us to secure the kiosk, but I wanted to see what was possible. At the end of the meeting, I had some really amazing options, which essentially consisted of a refundable security deposit and flexible payments, or a lowered monthly lease if paid in full.
During the rest of the day, amazing things happened. We found a sponsor who, after making sure that our concept and sales strategy was sound, and that we would provide an ROI, offered to provide the deposit. That in itself was a miracle.
After that, two of our vendors agreed to split part of the lease agreement, leaving a smaller cost to be paid at the end of the month by revenue generated by sales.
Now, that’s still kind of risky. It just is. (And I’ll talk more about this in the next post). But, consider these options side by side:
Option 1.
The opportunity to sell a variety of extremely sell-able holiday items, in a bustling mall during the month of December (though involving a degree of personal risk, as I would assume the responsibility to sell enough to cover the remainder of the lease).
Option 2.
The opportunity to set up a display table in a store in a local shopping center that gets decent traffic, but that would require a huge marketing effort to draw in customers, as well as more emphasis and organization on the Santa delivery-service as part of the business.
The clincher was when I asked the mall management for some stats on average holiday traffic and kiosk sales. By no means is that a guarantee that we’ll be wildly successful, but it does provide a context for making the decision.
Essentially, the traffic in the mall on a holiday weekend is about 50,000 people. So, being in the mall over 30 days including 4 weekends… would dramatically increase our chances of doing well.
The low average sales for kiosks… do very well, and besides that, being in a high-visibility location would provide each of these vendors’ products with a great audience– especially as some of them are fairly new/local projects that can definitely use more attention and brand recognition.
To make a long story short, we determined to move forward with the plan of acquiring the kiosk lease, finalizing inventory orders with all of the vendors, completing the necessary paperwork, the mall lease application, bank and tax forms, and anything else that came up. 
Friday was looking like it would be pretty busy…
